Questions about OS 6

I don't think btrfs supports raid 5/6 yet, which may be one large reason why legacy devices are not supported.

from the wiki article linked above;

Planned features include: Online filesystem check[30] Very fast offline filesystem check[citation needed] Parity-based RAID (RAID5 and RAID6)[30]

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

Coming in 3.9 preliminary Raid 5/6 support (details in the announcement)

ReadyNAS OS uses md devices to do the RAID. You can already use RAID-5 on a ReadyNAS OS device.

NetGear does not support in-place conversion. You need to transfer your data across your network from a RAIDiator 4.2.x device to one running 6.x

Why not allow OS 6 to be installed in/on older units if and only if the unit hardware meets minimum requirements AND the unit has been erased and/or Factory Reset?

There have already been multiple discussions on that topic, here on forum threads, and on the ReadyNAS Facebook pages. NTGR is not supporting it. Though will only be a matter of time before someone does it anyways.

I wonder why btrfs was chosen. Everything I read about it says "beta".

This has been discussed here: https://www.facebook.com/AllAboutReadyNAS/posts/171244913026833

ReadyNAS wrote:
BTRFS is part of the SUSE and Oracle's production linux distributions. Here is just one article showing BTRFS is ready for production. https://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/s ... dy-to-rock Link to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Kernal release information including the inclusion of BTRFS. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/l ... 555063.pdf

Do Ready OS use Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Kernal?

The answer's going to be related to product positioning and life cycles. If N could do it, they still might prefer not to as they want customers to upgrade/switch to the new stuff. One of the rules of Product Management is to increase the cost and reduce the support to old products - this is consistent. It's also another step in the transitioning away from the ethos of Infrant.

mdgm wrote:

This has been discussed here: https://www.facebook.com/AllAboutReadyNAS/posts/171244913026833 ReadyNAS wrote: BTRFS is part of the SUSE and Oracle's production linux distributions. Here is just one article showing BTRFS is ready for production. https://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/s ... dy-to-rock Link to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Kernal release information including the inclusion of BTRFS. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/l ... 555063.pdf

That's no argument! That it's included in the kernel in some distributions is completely irrelevant (it's been in the mainline since 2009). The point is that BTRFS is very much in a state of development. If you check patches and bugs popping up RIGHT NOW, it's obvious that BTRFS is a bleeding-edge choice. RAID5/6 support was dragged into the codebase THIS FEBRUARY for Pete's sake! (announcement: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.fil ... trfs/23006 where the main developer calls this "experimental"). Now, of course NTGR is probably running BTRFS on top of a MDRAID (X-raid2) instead of native BTRFS RAID, but in that case there are even fewer reasons to choose a bleeding-edge file system. Or, at least, you are not even going for performance. You just get features, perhaps even with less performance. And the only really valuable end-user feature is the snapshots.

Why in the world would I entrust my data to experimental file systems? These devices are meant to be rock solid and store data securely, yet there are documented problems right now. I'm sure NTGR could make a reeeaaally convincing facebook-argument for Reiser4 too, but until we see what happens to early adopters, I won't be buying more NTGR storage products and won't be recommending them to anyone. Synology are miles ahead for consumers (which means ARM-based devices) anyway.

Some very strange decisions from NTGR lately. Unproven file system, dropping support for old devices. When you try to leapfrog the competition, don't jump too far ahead of your customers.

Yes MD devices are used.

On balance NetGear decided BTRFS in its current state is a better filesystem than EXT4 and that now is the time to switch. No filesystem is perfect.

As well as supporting unlimited snapshots BTRFS has a range of other features. It also doesn't have the expansion limitations that EXT4 in RAIDiator-x86 4.2.x has.