Disk Sizings

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Marc_V wrote:

 

You can check the drives tested on these units by checking the ReadyNAS Hardware compatibility list.

 

... Regarding migration or expansion, it would be best to upgrade the lowest capacity drive first

I'd suggest NAS-purposed drives for these particular NAS - either WDC Reds or Seagate Ironwolfs.  I don't recommend desktop-class drives for any NAS, and enterprise-class drives are overkill for these particular units.

The Ironwolf drives might not be on the HCL for the older NV+ v2 (Netgear stopped updating it some years ago), but they will work fine.

On the upgrade strategy - as Marc_V says, it is most cost effective when you upgrade the smallest drives.  Also, in the long run it is cheaper to go with larger drives.  I'd pass on the 3 TB models, and go to at least 4 TB.  US pricing is actually almost the same.  You'd need at least two larger disks for each NAS (see the capacity rule below).  FWIW, upgrading two drives in the RN104 to 4 TB would double your storage capacity.  Upgrading all four drives would quadruple it.

You can just hot-insert the larger drives into the NAS - waiting for each one to resync and for expansion to complete before you install the next disk.  The capacity rule is "sum the drives and subtract the largest". One implication of the rule is that there will be no expansion until you upgrade the second drive. Keep in mind that the NAS reports volume size in TiB (1024*1024*1024*1024), not TB (1000*1000*1000*1000).  Google will convert this for you (try entering 4 TB in TiB).  

I'd like to underscore Marc_V 's recommendation to back up the NAS first.  Every sector on every drive will be either read or written after each disk insertion.  As a result, disk issues often surface when you expand the volume. And if you encounter disk errors during the expansion you will lose all the data in the volume.  So perhaps order a USB disk as part of the upgrade.  Post-upgrade you can put all the data on the RN104, and use the NV+ v2 only for backup.  Even with that, I'd recommend using the USB disk as a secondary backup.  Backups are much cheaper (and more certain) than data recovery services.

Personally I like to test the drives before I install them - using Seatools for Seagate disks, and Lifeguard for Western Digital.  I run both the long non-destructive test, and the full destructive write test.  I do this in a Windows PC, using a USB/Sata adapter kit.