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Spanna's avatar
Spanna
Aspirant
Aug 03, 2020
Solved

Comparing ReadyNAS RN312 to RN2120

Hi all. I am in the process of updating my old Duo v2's. I've already bought an RN312 and love the better GUI and Samba v2 support. I'm in Australia and wanted another 312 but it seems they have become rare. The nearest I could buy was a RN21200. One of them will become my primary device and enjoy 2x new WD 14TB drives. My basic question is which unit is newer/better?? Nothing to complex or technical; just a basic assesment is fine by me. Thanks for your help! 

  • The main difference is that the RN212 uses an ARM processor, and the RN312 uses an Intel processor.  Some apps aren't available for ARM (and of course you need to install the ARM versions for the ones that are). The RN312 will give you quite a bit more information on the performance page of the web ui (a variety of graphs).

     

    The RN212 is a newer platform (launched in 2015).  The RN312 was launched in 2013 with the original wave of OS 6 platforms.  The RN312 went end-of-life when the RN422 was launched in 2018.

     

    Warranty is shorter on the RN212 (3 years for new purchasers).  The RN312 warranty is 5 years for new purchasers.

     

    From a performance point of view, they are pretty comparable - similar file transfer speeds, similar performance with plex.

     

     

    I suggest making the RN212 the main NAS.  My thinking is that you can directly migrate disks from the RN212 to the RN312 if the RN212 fails.  Migration in the other direction actually did work for me (I did it accidentally once).  But I don't think it's officially supported.  You should keep both NAS on the same firmware, as you can run into trouble with migrating from arm->x86 if the firmware doesn't match.

3 Replies

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  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User

    The main difference is that the RN212 uses an ARM processor, and the RN312 uses an Intel processor.  Some apps aren't available for ARM (and of course you need to install the ARM versions for the ones that are). The RN312 will give you quite a bit more information on the performance page of the web ui (a variety of graphs).

     

    The RN212 is a newer platform (launched in 2015).  The RN312 was launched in 2013 with the original wave of OS 6 platforms.  The RN312 went end-of-life when the RN422 was launched in 2018.

     

    Warranty is shorter on the RN212 (3 years for new purchasers).  The RN312 warranty is 5 years for new purchasers.

     

    From a performance point of view, they are pretty comparable - similar file transfer speeds, similar performance with plex.

     

     

    I suggest making the RN212 the main NAS.  My thinking is that you can directly migrate disks from the RN212 to the RN312 if the RN212 fails.  Migration in the other direction actually did work for me (I did it accidentally once).  But I don't think it's officially supported.  You should keep both NAS on the same firmware, as you can run into trouble with migrating from arm->x86 if the firmware doesn't match.

    • Spanna's avatar
      Spanna
      Aspirant

      That was a really really helpful reply Thanks so much!! 

      • Sandshark's avatar
        Sandshark
        Sensei - Experienced User

        FYI, I did an experiment moving a single drive volume back and forth between an RN212 and RN312, and it continued to work just fine for at least three itterations (I forget how many I did).  That was fairly recently, with OS 6.10.3.  But there is no guarantee that capability will be maintained in future versions.

         

        I should have run some speed tests on them, since the drive and network configurations would be common.  But I didn't think to do it then.

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