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Forum Discussion
New NAS & Giving Up X-RAID
In researching my possible replacement for my RN424 (which is fully operational, just no longer supported), I have come to appreciate the benefits of X-RAID. While I am technically competent in many ways, I am not an IT expert, and up to this time (for the past 10-12 years in which I have been using a Netgear RND2110 and then the current RN424), I was unaware of the benefits that X-RAID and what it had been performing for me in the background: basically, managing the sizes of my four volumes (shares).
In contrast, Asustor NAS' apparently do not provide this feature. (I am considering their AS6804T.) It seems that I have to manage the sizes of the volumes myself, and I can find no clear direction on how to do this in their support resources. Furthermore, the documentation says that volumes can be expanded (how I cannot tell so far) but they can not be reduced, providing fertile ground for my making largely irreversible mistakes.
If I have found any disadvantage of X-RAID, it is the inconvenience that Windows does not report the actual utilization of individual volumes; instead, Windows Explorer reports each volume as total utilization of the total NAS capacity. As a result, I don't know how large each volume actually is, or how to "size" each volume in my hypothetical new NAS (TBD) if I want to migrate and replicate each volume in the new system.
The point of this post is not to depend on you all for me to learn about Asustor devices; perhaps it is best that I post this in an Asustor forum somewhere. But, I would be grateful for any verification of my understanding, and any insights any of you might have. I assume that many of you here are or have been in the same position as myself and have had to deal with the same issue.
1 Reply
If I have found any disadvantage of X-RAID, it is the inconvenience that Windows does not report the actual utilization of individual volumes; instead, Windows Explorer reports each volume as total utilization of the total NAS capacity.
There is some confusion on terminology here. With X-RAID you only have one volume. Files and parity blocks are spread across all the disks (with large files have data blocks on all the volumes).
ReadyNAS Shares are BTRFS sub-volumes (not volumes).
Furthermore, the documentation says that volumes can be expanded (how I cannot tell so far) but they can not be reduced, providing fertile ground for my making largely irreversible mistakes.
That is true with X-RAID also. There is a way to do it manually with SSH, but it is tricky, so I wouldn't recommend using that method unless you have a backup.
Shares are another matter. There is no need to manually expand them with ReadyNAS, and that should also be true with the Asustor.
But there likely will be a learning curve on managing the RAID if you ever have unequal size disks.
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