ReadyNAS Pro to ReadyNAS 3200

1. The 3200 only supports disks with capacities up to 2TB on channels 5-12 due to a hardware limitation with the 8 port SAS/SATA controller (unless NetGear has silently released a new version would probably have -200 instead of -100 at end of name if so). Likewise the 4200 only supports disks with capacities up to 2TB on channels 5-12. There appears to be a new 4200v2 which supports 3TB drives on all channels and is full of 12 of them (http://www.netgear.com/business/products/storage/readyNAS-4200/RN12T1230.aspx). That is the only way to guarantee you gets 4200 that supports 3TB drives on all channels. I would expect the 4200v1 would no longer be in production, but there is likely many of them still around at different resellers.

2. The 3200 and 4200 are rackmount units designed for the server room. They are deliberately designed to have the fans running at full speed all the time, so they are very noisy.

3. It's much cheaper to use 6-bay desktop ReadyNAS units than 12-bay ReadyNAS units.

4. Rackmount ReadyNAS units require the use of enterprise drives. These typically have 5 year warranties, rotational vibration safeguard and cost at least twice as much as the consumer versions. This is reflected on the compatibility list (http://www.readynas.com/hcl. Do note that NetGear will deny support if you use drives not on the list. So when migrating disks across you should check both the source and destination NAS compatibility lists. Try putting consumer disks in a 3200 and you'll likely find they fail and fail fast.

5. So whilst normally migrating disks across would work fine (http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_migrate_disks_over_from_an_existing_readynas_to_another) it's not an option for you.

Thanks, looks like I'll have to get another Pro then...

Get a Pro 6 (RNDP6000-200 aka RNDP6000v2). This has a faster CPU than the Pro Business Edition (RNDP6000-100). See CPU Specs of the ReadyNAS

If you take a look at the Comparison Charts you'll notice that the 4200 power consumption is over double that of the Pro 6, and that's when there's only 6 disks in a 4200. It's much more economical to run multiple desktop ReadyNAS units.

I do recommend using the optional X-RAID2 dual-redundancy (like RAID-6 and requires a minimum of four disks)