Limit On Volume Count?

StephenB wrote:

I've left my pro running OS4, but of course use OS6 on my RN102. I agree that the major showstopper type bugs have been fixed (including a couple in 6.1.7 beta). OS6 is still missing some features I use - in addition to disk spindown, you cannot send a WoL packet in a backup job, and you cannot schedule disk scrubs and volume scans. On the other hand, it includes some nice features that are missing in OS4 - including Antivirus, and more usable snapshots. It also will (sometimes) allow you to switch between flexraid and xraid w/o data loss.

This is not encouraging about OS6. It sounds like it was released as beta quality, and they are playing catch up in the field.

Both the x86 OS4 and OS6 manuals clearly state that a 6-bay NAS can have up to 6 volumes. If that it not really the case, Netgear should either (a) fix it in a maintenance release or (b) revise the manual. (a) would be my preference, since I think users expect the ability to run jbod on any home NAS.

The limit is real. My guess is that someone in Marketing decided that they needed a 6 bay HW solution, but the software did not fully support it, and the company did not want to expend the engineering resources to fix the issues.

This limit is a real problem because you cannot even create a volume to test a new drive. You basically cannot do anything with the drive until you add it to an existing volume.

And, while we are at it, I hope that OS6 has better drive management support than OS4. OS4 lacks the ability to run targeted tests on drives, either offline, or using the SMART capabilities. Also, there is no way to wipe a drive which is being taken out of service. These are serious deficiencies.

The diagnostic information provided when a drive fails is basically non-existent. The NAS is a little computer with drives in it. It needs the ability to fully test, manage, and diagnose failures which occur. Requiring someone to have a PC available which they can plug a failing drive into is not a valid solution.

An alternative approach to getting more logical volumes would be iSCSI

I looked at iSCSI. It is an inadequate solution:

1) It is not a general file service.
2) Not all client OSes support it natively, often requires 3rd party software.
3) 2TB capacity limit is inadequate.