ReadyNV: Can´t get out the Tray...

jayseae wrote:
Still, it would be nice if it would be fixed/if existing customers would be taken care of, because as was mentioned, these weren't cheap (and the drive trays are).

Hmm. I disagree. You are paying less for a very compact quiet NAS, opposed to a server grade, rackmount NAS that normally requires an ton of extra space, power and AC. The problem I see here is that the latching mechanism has been designed to be extremely compact; the tolerances are super tight. For instance, the tolerances for the sliding mechanisms in the button are just a few thousandths of an inch, whereas in server/production level stuff I've seen, the latching mechanism has exaggerated latching movements (easily 1/2" to an 1" of latch movement), which make dust and heat expansion issues irrelevant. These NAS's are cheap compared to the production level stuff.

I personally don't see a problem here. You're paying for a small compact consumer NAS, and there are trade-offs that are included with that purchase. You're trading reliability for space; for instance, a single fan at low RPM to cool the drives, a single low wattage PSU, and compact plastic trays to lock the drives in place. You'd need to have at least two of these (fan's, PSU's) to have true redundancy. I do think that there are definite things that could be done to improve the NAS, though honestly I don't feel like they are critical flaws that need to be addressed.

I think they did make correct decisions on what to focus build costs on. What's more important, all your drives getting the correct amount of power, and your NAS CPU have enough horsepower to handle all of the services it provides, so you can actually retrieve your data; or the physical latching mechanism, which in all intents and purposes for their documentation, seemed like they assumed it would only be used once or twice (maybe they found that this wasn't exactly the use case); and really doesn't 'break' as to leave the drive physically stuck in the system.

Here's the list I have come up with at the top of my head of things that could be improved on the NAS:
1) Remove the air filter on the front, it can't be removed/reinserted and cleaned easily and becomes ineffective after a few months, reducing airflow.
2) Replace the plastic drive latches with metal ones. This serves a dual purpose: The metal can effectively conduct more heat away from the drives by airflow and better conductivity (helping to fix the hot two middle drive problem); this can also include a re-designed tolerance for the latching mechanism which allows heat expansion, etc. The metal parts can be painted, so the finished front ends wouldn't look any different than they do now.
3) Create a new fan package that has dual fans in it, which will allow one fan to die and not risk the drives overheating; The only real solid way to do this is to also re-rev the PSU / controller board to handle a second fan.
4) Create a new PSU that has two PSU's together in the same package. Again, the only real way to do this it to re-rev the controller board backplane to allow two power sources and switching at once.
5) Dual controller boards and backplanes.

Of all of these, only 1 and 2 are really possible; the others require major re-design, and at that point, you are talking server grade solutions, as well as additional heat / power issues that need to be accommodated for.

Personally I would buy some redesigned trays, specifically for more heat transfer, if they were offered; but I don't think they will. I'm considering making my own metal frontends for the NAS.