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Forum Discussion
Huh. New 428 cheaper than increasing 316 storage
I just had an odd epiphany that I thought I'd pass along. I've got a RN31600 home theater movie/music server with 6 6TB drives configured as XRAID6. I've passed 80% storage usage and loading today's 30GB+ BluRay movies eats up storage. So I looked into increasing storage with 8TB drives, but of course that will require replacing all 6 drives.
The cost of doing this is signficant and as I looked into other alternatives I had a sudden realization: It will actually be cheaper to buy a brand new RN428, use the current 316 drives, and then buy and add 2 more 6TB drives. Not only will the cost at today's prices be 35% to 40% less, I'll upgrade to much newer ReadyNAS technology, and even get a larger increase in storage (6x6TB data vs 4x8TB). Win, win, win!
I'm sure this is obvious to many of you folks, but like I said it was a bit of an epiphany to me.
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Yes. This is a great option.
I would use a scratch disk (must not be from your array) to get the RN428 firmware updated to the same version as what's on the RN428, verify it comes up O.K. after the firmware update (i.e. after the reboot), power down, remove the scratch disk and move your disks across keeping the order the same.You may wish to get some disks for the RN316 at some point and use that to backup important data from the RN428 and/or to provide additional storage if your RN428 fills up.
Your new RN428 would come with a 5 year limited hardware warranty. The RN428 has a newer generation CPU than the RN316 and the RN428 has a quad-core CPU so it's a good step up in performance as well. The use of ECC RAM is nice as well.
I currently use 6TB disks as well. Personally I don't want to get 8TB disks. I want to have a more significant increase in capacity over what I already have when I move to higher capacity disks. I'd like to get e.g. 12TB (or greater) capacity disks but the price is very steep at the moment. Maybe in a few years or so the price will have come down to a level that I'm happy with.Yes, I always move the 'old' ReadyNAS over to being backup when I get new ReadyNAS hardward. (This is the 4th or 5th time, now.) Currently the older, old system being used for backup is a Pro Business system with 6 4TB disks configured JBOD. (As I mentioned in another thread, the PSU on that died and that's what started all this upgrading and looking into changes.) The 316 is what's now going to replace that. I'm going to wait for some lower 6TB prices and then load it in XRaid5.
Quick question, though. I've got a 256GB SSD that I replaced in another system. Is that large enough to use in the 428 to set the firmware?
Yes, that's more than big enough.
one thing you might consider, if you haven't already, is moving to dual redundancy.
The more disks you have in an array and the bigger it is, the longer it takes to rebuild/resize, the greater the chance that multiple disks could fail during a rebuild.
Of course you do loose a 2nd disk worth of space to parity, but greater peace of mind and better protection of dual redundancy is worth it.
In any case, never forget that no raid or device is ever a replacement for backups.
backups = multiple copies of your data, on different devices and ideally in different locations.
If there is no separate copy somewhere, then your data is not safe.
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