ReadyNas NV+ "Kernel Panic"

2TB drives are the max supported by your NV+ units. So 4x2TB disks is the max you can put in one.

In the second NAS: Disk 4 definitely and probably disk 3 too.

mdgm wrote:
2TB drives are the max supported by your NV+ units. So 4x2TB disks is the max you can put in one. In the second NAS: Disk 4 definitely and probably disk 3 too.

Thanks mdgm, do you know if the 2TB limit is a hardware or a software limit?

I'm wondering if there would be any chance of a future update or hack either official or unofficial that would allow the use of 3TB drives?

I'm sure I've read something about daisy chaining? Would there be any way to use two NV+ linked together to create one large 16TB X-RAID array?

That way I may even consider buying 2 addition NV+ units & replicating the set-up I have at the moment however instead of having 8TB X-Raid & a 8TB X-Raid back-up I could have 16TB & 16TB back-up?

Thanks :)

clingon wrote:
...do you know if the 2TB limit is a hardware or a software limit?

It's definitely a hard limit, with no hacks to fix it. Netgear was apparently looking at fixing it when the 3 TB drives first came out, but eventually said no. The NV+ v1 has been end-of-life for a long time now, and certainly isn't competitive any more - there are some maintenance releases from time to time, but that's all you should expect.

clingon wrote:
I'm sure I've read something about daisy chaining? Would there be any way to use two NV+ linked together to create one large 16TB X-RAID array?

No. Some of the newer modules have an expansion module (EDA500). That simply wouldn't work on the NV+, and it would be a very bad idea to span a RAID array across two chassis.

So you are at the ceiling of what the NV+ v1 allows - 8 TB raw storage, 6 TB (or about 5500 GiB) volume size. Anything more requires a new NAS. That could either be a second NAS (not connected with your NV+) or a new replacement.

The RN104 is much faster than what you have, and currently has a street price of ~$230 in the US. The two bay version (RN102) can be found for about $150 - less than the price of one 4 TB disk drive.

Thanks again Stephen

Admittedly I know nothing about the internal workings of the NV+.

However, gut tell's me Netgear could have implemented something fairly easily to get the 3TB to work in the NV+ :roll:

Thanks for the recommendation of the RN104, I would probably go out & buy a couple (like Netgear want me to do) if they were the 2014 equivalent of the NV+, but they don't review very well. Also, now I'm thinking are the gonna go "End Of Life" on me in like 6 months time? lol

Think if I was going to get a new NAS I would go for the Synology DiskStation 4-Bay DS412+

clingon wrote:
However, gut tell's me Netgear could have implemented something fairly easily to get the 3TB to work in the NV+

Back in 2010 (when 3 TB drives hit the market) Netgear had a huge business incentive to support them on the NV+ v1. If it had had been "fairly easy" they would certainly have done so. Also, I have a couple of pre-2010 PCs that never managed to support these drives either (at least not using the SATA interfaces on the system boards).

So I think your gut is wrong.

clingon wrote:
Thanks for the recommendation of the RN104...now I'm thinking are the gonna go "End Of Life" on me in like 6 months time?

That doesn't seem likely to me. And if it did happen you could migrate the disks to several other OS6 models (any of the RN300 or RN500 series) without data loss.

clingon wrote:
Think if I was going to get a new NAS I would go for the Synology DiskStation 4-Bay DS412+

The equivalent readynas would be the RN314.

Thanks Stephen

I found this article on 3TB drives...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything_you_need_to_know_about_3TB_hard_drives.html

What I take from that is that the technology to support higher than 2TB drives was around for years before the NV+ & many vendors incorporated as a matter of course.

However Infrant/ Netgear, producing hardware for the sole purpose of data storage decided not to do so?

Depending on which side of the fence you're sitting on I think many would see that as incredibly silly or clever.

Also it's evident if you look at the rear of the first generation NV+ units that production modifications were being implemented.

My two NV+ units state 'NV+ v2' & 'NV+ v3' after them (although confusingly they are both 'NV+ V1' units if you go by the model number).

There appears to have been clear chances to modify & implement the use of 3tb drives with the NV+, either from the outset, within the further two modifications or possibly since the 'EOL'.

At least, it would have been nice if Netgear could have maybe issued a statement or explanation on why 3TB drives wont work, especially for those who purchased NV+'s when 3TB drives were actually on the market. Some might wonder that the fact nothing has been said, actually says a whole lot more.

Anyway's what I will give them is the fact I have this great forum to voice my personal opinion on to the great people on here helping out, that's invaluable & one reason why I opted to buy my NV+'s when I did. :D

Thanks for the recommendation on the RN314, these days I often make purchases on the strength of price & Amazon reviews which have never let me down.

At the moment:

RN31400-100NAS
$539.74 & FREE Shipping

16 Reviews - Ave. 4/5 Stars
5 star:(9)
4 star:(3)
3 star:(1)
2 star:(2)
1 star:(1)

DS412+
$577.47 & FREE Shipping

211 Reviews - Ave. 4.5/5 Stars
5 star:(147)
4 star:(39)
3 star:(11)
2 star:(5)
1 star:(9)

On that bases, if I need to upgrade I would probably go for the Synology unless there was an obvious plus point staying with Netgear.

I've checked & Synology also have a forum.

clingon wrote:
Some might wonder that the fact nothing has been said, actually says a whole lot more.

Actually, as early as January 2011 Netgear folks were posting here that Sparc (nv+) support was "unlikely"
- viewtopic.php?f=65&t=49775&p=284341#p284341

That about 4 months after the first 3 TB drive model was introduced. So as far as I'm concerned they were up front about this. Frankly, in 2011 it was pretty clear that the V1 platforms didn't have much life left - the sparc chip didn't have the horsepower.

Of course there is competition in this market, and there are plenty of reasonable people who chose Synology. If you think they make a better product, then go ahead.

clingon wrote:
However Infrant/ Netgear, producing hardware for the sole purpose of data storage decided not to do so?

The NV+ is an evolutionary improvement over the NV which was released in Feb 2006 which is similar to hardware released in 2004.

The Sparc ReadyNAS units use hardware accelerated RAID. We added support for 4k sector partition alignment.

For x86 we added support for GPT in 4.2.16. This also uses software RAID but without hardware acceleration.

Even if support for GPT was possible there would likely be performance issues using high capacity disks on Sparc.

My recommendation is to go with a NAS with an Intel CPU if you want to use high capacity disks.

clingon wrote:

Also it's evident if you look at the rear of the first generation NV+ units that production modifications were being implemented. My two NV+ units state 'NV+ v2' & 'NV+ v3' after them (although confusingly they are both 'NV+ V1' units if you go by the model number). There appears to have been clear chances to modify & implement the use of 3tb drives with the NV+, either from the outset, within the further two modifications or possibly since the 'EOL'.

The hardware modifications made were due to the need to change some parts e.g. NICs used, due to previous parts used no longer being available.

clingon wrote:
At least, it would have been nice if Netgear could have maybe issued a statement or explanation on why 3TB drives wont work, especially for those who purchased NV+'s when 3TB drives were actually on the market. Some might wonder that the fact nothing has been said, actually says a whole lot more.

As Stephen mentioned yoh-dah did say that Sparc support for 3TB disks was "unlikely".

clingon wrote:
Anyway's what I will give them is the fact I have this great forum to voice my personal opinion on to the great people on here helping out, that's invaluable & one reason why I opted to buy my NV+'s when I did. :D

Yes. This forum was a big reason why I first came to use the ReadyNAS back in 2009.

clingon wrote:
On that bases, if I need to upgrade I would probably go for the Synology unless there was an obvious plus point staying with Netgear.

The ReadyNAS 314 has double the RAM (2 GB vs 1 GB in the Synology) and uses BTRFS, a modern filesystem which has some nice features that help provide better protection for your data.

Do your research and choose the new NAS that suits you.

Thanks guys, as a small home user that heavily invested a large chunk of their $$$ on 2 x NV+ NAS units, I'm just a bit frustrated that I can use larger than 2tb drives & will soon have to buy 2 new NAS units. :(

Do you know when would the RN31400-100NAS go end of life?

Also, with regards to future expansion & expandability how would the Netgear fair against the Synology in your opinion?

Thanks :)

One quick point - one option you have is to buy a single NAS and back it up to the two NV+. That assumes that you won't have more than 16 TB of space on the new NAS, and use jbod on the two NV+. So you might not need 2 new units.

I don't work for Netgear, so I have no EOL information (if I were working for them, I almost certainly couldn't comment). The RN314 came out in March 2013. It's part of a much larger family of OS6 products, and you can migrate disks between the various platforms without data loss. That includes migration from the ARM RN100 series to the x86 devices. I don't see Netgear making this end-of-life anytime soon.

I've never owned a Synology, and I really don't want to compare the ReadyNAS I know well with the Synology I don't know at all.

Overall, I've found the ReadyNAS to be extremely reliable over the years - I have 4, and no failures to this point. So if I were looking for another NAS now, I would certainly start there. The one thing I don't like is the cloud implementation - performance is hit or miss, and there have been Netgear cloud apps that weren't maintained (for instance ReadyNAS photos). They need to fix that (and I think they know that).