X-RAID upgrading from 2 drives to 4

Looks right to me

Excellent, thanks!

Next question a bit more subjective: I currently have the Seagate ES enterprise level drives, which have performed marvellously for the last, oo, 10 years or so. Will I regret it if I just went for cheap and cheerful Samsung F4s this time round instead of say, the WD line of enterprise drives?

Can anybody comment on (or point me to a resource that shows) relative noise, power consumption, vibration comparisons etc?

There is only one Samsung 1TB on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) and it is the F1 HD103UJ.

since you only have 400 gig or so of data, it would probably be faster to back it up (to a pc or external drive, using one of your new drives if necessary) then factory default with the remaining new disks.

btw 4x 2tb drives gives 5555gb, see my sig.

TeknoJnky wrote:
since you only have 400 gig or so of data, it would probably be faster to back it up (to a pc or external drive, using one of your new drives if necessary) then factory default with the remaining new disks.

+1. Of course you should upgrade to the latest RAIDiator before doing a factory reset so you can get a clean setup on the latest firmware.

PapaBear wrote:
There is only one Samsung 1TB on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) and it is the F1 HD103UJ.

Really?! I'm looking at the HCL right now and it says the 2TB F4 HD204UI is on it - am I looking at the wrong list?
http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=82

TeknoJnky wrote:
since you only have 400 gig or so of data, it would probably be faster to back it up (to a pc or external drive, using one of your new drives if necessary) then factory default with the remaining new disks. btw 4x 2tb drives gives 5555gb, see my sig.

Good point. I wasn't going to buy all four disks at the same time from the same place (to avoid having them from the same batch, if there's a potential for bad batches - does anybody still do this?) so I was thinking two, then another two 3-6 months down the line.

I have to update RAIDiator anyway, since I'm only on 4.1.4 and this doesn't support 4K sectors does it?

QuackingPlums wrote:
PapaBear wrote: There is only one Samsung 1TB on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) and it is the F1 HD103UJ. Really?! I'm looking at the HCL right now and it says the 2TB F4 HD204UI is on it - am I looking at the wrong list? http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=82

PapaBear was referring to 1TB drives not 2TB drives.

QuackingPlums wrote:
Good point. I wasn't going to buy all four disks at the same time from the same place (to avoid having them from the same batch, if there's a potential for bad batches - does anybody still do this?) so I was thinking two, then another two 3-6 months down the line.

Yes people still do this kind of thing.

QuackingPlums wrote:
I have to update RAIDiator anyway, since I'm only on 4.1.4 and this doesn't support 4K sectors does it?

You must have updated to 4.1.7 or later and subsequently done a factory reset (wipes all data, settings, everything) to get 4k sector alignment. Now would be a good time do this as you don't have much data so backing up all your data shouldn't take as long as it would in the future. Backing up 400GB of data is much quicker than backing up say 4TB of data.

mdgm wrote:
PapaBear was referring to 1TB drives not 2TB drives.

Right, of course. I should take my time and read properly. :lol:

I guess in my mind I'm weighing up the 2TB Samsung drives against the 1TB WD drives (can't really justify 4x 2TB WD drives at the moment!)

Thanks for your advice everyone.

You can start with a few 2TB drives and add more later. That would be the way to go.

Hehe - that never quite works out though. About a year ago I was going to do that with 2x 1TB drives, but never got round to it - admittedly this was partly because my UPS packed in and it has taken an absolute age for APC to get its replacement in stock on this side of the pond.

I'm thinking that I should go straight for 4 drives this time to maximise the investment (and capacity!). 2x 1TB would only give me 1TB capacity, whereas 4x 2TB gives me a lot more straight off the bat, and it's similar in cost. With the size of DSLR photos and HD video these days I'm gonna need the extra space at some point soon anyway!

EDIT: PS, whilst I'm here, does the new firmware make better use of a 1GB memory upgrade or is it still a negligible performance increase? I only run CIFS, iTunes and UPnP streaming and I remember reading way back when I bought the NV+ that there was hardly any benefit to 1GB.