Hi Everyone. I purchased and setup my Readynas Pro Pioneer around Jan 2010. Aside from one disk issue (increasing errors, which Seagate replaced under warranty) it has been a nice experience. I am now running out of space (less than 20% capacity remaining) and would like some advice on expansion.Here is are details around my setup.4 Seagate 1TB's (ST331000528AS)X-RAID2, 4 disks with dual redundancyFirmware: 4.2.12I would like advice on how best to INCREMENTALLY increase my capacity over time - with the immediate need to upgrade at least another 1TB-2TB (which should at least last me through the end of 2015). Any explanations/advice even simple explanations like increase one disk (1TB) to immediately increase storage by 1TB or upgrade to larger drive now to make future upgrades easier would be greatly appreciated.I have forgotten with my 4 disk dual redundancy setup, what happens when I simply add one disk of same capacity or one disk of higher capacity.Is there a known maximum storage for this unit? (while keeping X-RAID2 w/ dual redundancy) ?Also, any recommendations of disks would be great (and vendors to buy from). I am thinking of spending more for the enterprise versions which have longer warranties. I have reviewed the current HCL and at least for the Hitachi and Seagate 2TB enterprise disks, but cannot find them at Tiger Direct or Directron (places I ordered things from before).Thanks!

I am thinking the 17:30:19 "Disk failure detected." is a consequence of the removal. winger13 wrote: What do you mean 'I hope Netgear will comment' ? I haven't sent them this question, only posted here for the wonderful user's community! The 18:00:27 "The disk on channel 1 has failed. Shutting down the system to prevent possible data loss resulting from additional failed drives." happens well after the disk insertion. It'd be useful if Netgear could identify what triggered this error. Several Netgear employees are active in this forum. It does sound like your system is behaving normally now.

With dual redundancy, you will need to upgrade all four of your disks to get more storage space. So small steps probably don't make much sense. For NAS drives (seagate NAS or WDC Red) 4x2TB would cost ~$400 US and gain you 2 TB of storage. 4x3TB would cost ~$550 but gain you 4 TB - twice as big an increase. As far as drive choices, I suggest the WD30EFRX (3 TB drives). They aren't enterprise, but they are intended for NAS, and have 3 year warranties (much better than the 1 year that the desktop drives have). They are also the newest 3 TB drive on the HCL. I use them in my pro-6 and my RN102, and have had no issues with them at all.If you go off the HCL, Netgear will likely deny support - and you do have about a year of warranty left.There are two expansion limits (a)you can't exceed 16 TiB total volume size. That wouldn't apply to you until someone makes > 8 TB drives.(b) You can't grow a volume more than 8 TiB over its lifetime. If you started with this configuration, you could expand up to 4x5TB. So you have plenty of headroom.

Thanks StephenB. I vaguely remembering when I first purchased (and I am looking at my my hand-written notes now, which are shabby at best) I can fill up current empty slots 5 and 6 to increase capacity and maintain dual redundancy. This is why I left two empty slots. Like, maybe adding one 2TB into slots 5 and 6 will add at least 1TB capacity over what I have now (or is that 2TB ) ? Later, I can replace the existing 1TB's in pairs (like, if I replaced 2 more 1TB's with 2TB's I gain another 1TB). Am I misunderstanding something?

I was assuming you had a four slot unit. You can get more space by using your two empty slots. If you add 2 more disks ( 1 TB or greater) then your array will expand by 2 TB, and any extra will be wasted for now, until you upgrade the second pair to the larger size. You are still subject to the 8 TiB growth limit, so you couldn't expand the volume beyond 10 TiB unless you do a factory reset.So then the question becomes how big you want the larger drive size to be. It is more cost-effective to use bigger drives if you look at GB/dollar. But of course the drives do cost more. Also, your storage needs appear to be pretty small, since the 2 TB volume you have now has lasted you 4 years.So options are likely 2 TB drives or 3 TB drives. At current pricing if you use WDC Red drives:(1) adding 2x2TB will cost $220 (Amazon). You gain 2 TB of space - double what you have now.(2) Upgrading 1 pair costs another $220. You can another 2 TB of space.(3) upgrading the last pair costs another $220. You gain 2 TB of space.So the total project is $660 for 6 TB.Doing the same with 3 TB drives gives you(1) Adding 2x3TB costs you $260. You gain 2 TB of space(2) upgrading another pair costs you another $260. But you gain 4 TB of space.(3) upgrading the final pair costs you another $260. You gain another 4 TB, but you need to do a factory reset.(3a) upgrading just one of the final drives costs $130, and gains you 2 TB without the reset.Stopping at step (2) gives you 6 TB of growth for only $520 - $140 cheaper than going with 2 TB.Basically the price difference between 2TB and 3TB drives is small enough ($20 at the moment) that you might as well go with 3 TB.If you want to stick with enterprise drives, you can do the same math easily enough with whatever models you want to use.

Also, you should update your firmware, 4.2.12 is very old.

Ready for expansion (RN Pro Pioneer Edition)-Seeking Advice

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winger13
Guide
May 03, 2014
As part of the upgrade, I am planning on first upgrading my firmware.
vandermerwe wrote:
Also, you should update your firmware, 4.2.12 is very old.

The system email I periodically receive states the next available upgrade is to: 4.2.20 dated April 25, 2012.

I have a couple of questions:
1) There is one point listed on the release notes (http://www.readynas.com/?p=6346) which has me thinking.
7. Fix possible system hang during upgrade from pre-4.2.16 releases to latest.

If a known bug on a simple,normally straightforward firmware upgrade can hang a system, should I be concerned? I mean, what realistically is my fallback plan(s) if I performed the upgrade and 'win the lottery' and experience a hung system? As a reminder, I am out of warranty by about a year and at this point in my life I no longer have a huge amount of time to tinker with the 'funner things in life' like my NAS.

2) The most current firmware is: 4.2.26 (dated Feb 6, 2014).
Is there any reason why I cannot jump straight from my current 4.2.12 to 4.2.26, as opposed to first going to what the system-generated email states, 4.2.20? OR, is there another way I should be incrementally upgrading the NAS' firmware?

3) I have one backup of my NAS data. Prior to performing the firmware upgrade, is it highly recommended I created a second full backup? In other words, does a firmware upgrade pose a significant risk to my data?
winger13
Guide
Aug 21, 2014
I have just received my two 3TB WD Reds. What are the steps I need to go through now to install the two disks? I know a full backup is a good first step, but what next? Do I power down the RN Pro Pioneer unit, insert disks into empty bays# 5 and 6, then power on the RN and it will automatically expand? Do I need to somehow format or check the disks prior to installing into the RN ?

Thanks!
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 21, 2014
Update the firmware if you haven't already. You must be running 4.2.16 or later before you add the 3TB disks.

Add a 3TB disk while the NAS is on. Wait for the resync etc. to complete then add the next disk.

What disks were installed when you last did a factory default?

Note that if your volume capacity was 2.7 TB when you last did a factory default you cannot expand past 10.7 TB

vandermerwe wrote:
Also, you should update your firmware, 4.2.12 is very old.

winger13

Guide

Aug 21, 2014

mdgm wrote:
Update the firmware if you haven't already. You must be running 4.2.16 or later before you add the 3TB disks.

Add a 3TB disk while the NAS is on. Wait for the resync etc. to complete then add the next disk.

What disks were installed when you last did a factory default?

Note that if your volume capacity was 2.7 TB when you last did a factory default you cannot expand past 10.7 TB

mdgm wrote:
Update the firmware if you haven't already. You must be running 4.2.16 or later before you add the 3TB disks. Add a 3TB disk while the NAS is on. Wait for the resync etc. to complete then add the next disk. What disks were installed when you last did a factory default? Note that if your volume capacity was 2.7 TB when you last did a factory default you cannot expand past 10.7 TB

Yes my firmware had been updated.

I bought a brand new diskless RNPE then put in 4 1TB's in XRAID DUAL-REDUNDANCY giving me about 1.8TB capacity. As StephenB mentioned above:

There are two expansion limits
(a)you can't exceed 16 TiB total volume size. That wouldn't apply to you until someone makes > 8 TB drives.
(b) You can't grow a volume more than 8 TiB over its lifetime. If you started with this configuration, you could expand up to 4x5TB. So you have plenty of headroom.

Question. What would have happened if I had went ahead and installed both brand new disks into bays 5&6 while the unit was off and then turn the unit on?

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 21, 2014
That should also work. However if the disks were already partitioned the NAS may have failed to boot.
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 22, 2014
Though if you add 2 3 TB drives, the RAID volume will only expand by 2 TB. That's because you are using dual redundancy (you need 4 of the larger disks to use all the disk capacity in the array).

It will expand later on (when you replace 2 existing 1TB drives with 3TB models)

winger13

Guide

Aug 22, 2014

StephenB wrote:
Though if you add 2 3 TB drives, the RAID volume will only expand by 2 TB. That's because you are using dual redundancy (you need 4 of the larger disks to use all the disk capacity in the array).

It will expand later on (when you replace 2 existing 1TB drives with 3TB models)

StephenB wrote:
Though if you add 2 3 TB drives, the RAID volume will only expand by 2 TB. That's because you are using dual redundancy (you need 4 of the larger disks to use all the disk capacity in the array). It will expand later on (when you replace 2 existing 1TB drives with 3TB models)

Yep, I am following your notes from above where I upgrade 2 3TB's now, then 2 33TB's later as I need more space. I am thinking upgrading as space is needed vs in one shot now would save money as hard drive prices should decrease over time.

Are there any good reasons I should consider upgrading four 3TB's all at the same time?

StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 22, 2014
winger13 wrote:
StephenB wrote:
\...Are there any good reasons I should consider upgrading four 3TB's all at the same time?
There is no need to rush - I was just making sure you understood that there would be wasted space for the time being.
winger13
Guide
Aug 23, 2014
Well, I go mount the two new 3TB's to the drive tray's this morning and realized I the many hard drive screws I had laying around (from various misc project over the years) are the wrong type - they are the type where the head sticks above the the tray once screwed in as opposed to being flush mounted.

Would someone point me to what types of screws I should purchase? I just need eight for trays in Bays 5 and 6. I have an extra tray, so I guess I would need 12 screws if I wanted to mount a spare drive to that tray.

In the meantime, I jerry-rigged things and got the first new 3TB into Bay 5 and it is now restriping. From the looks of it, this may day a couple of hours, but so far, so good : )

Thanks!
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 23, 2014
Sometimes netgear will provide them - you can try pm'ing mdgm with a link to this thread.

Here's a link for screws that apparently fit: http://discountechnology.com/Counter-Su ... gory=18627

I haven't purchased them myself. I think there are a couple of other sources posted in the forum, you might try searching. (hint: using google with "site:readynas.com" often works better than site search).

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Ready for expansion (RN Pro Pioneer Edition)-Seeking Advice

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