RN102 NAS has bricked

---

Edmundcramp wrote:

RAID pretty much gaurentees day to day functionality but NAS systems do occasionally die - in the old days it was not a big deal, I could just build a new one but these days commercial NAS system "upgrades" often render the older disks unreadable. 

---

The ReadyNAS uses Linux software RAID via MDADM and BTRFS, neither invented nor altered by Netgear.  Nothing in the file system is proprietary or dependent on specificf hardware.  XRAID is "just": a set of algorithms that adds some automation to managing the RAID so owners that don't want to mess with that don't have to. While there have been some changes along the way, they were changes in BTRFS for all users. So, you certainly can build a Linux based NAS that will read ReadyNAS drives, assuming the RAID array is intact, not damaged.  Hardware RAID, while usually faster than software RAID, can create a problem if the controller dies.  I don't know if any of the current NAS manufacturers use hardware or other proprietary RAID, but Netgear does not.

You didn't really give your 102 a chance.  You reached a conclusion before really assessing the conditions properly, having assumed (incorrectly) that a battery issue would be a likely cause.  But it does have a very limited CPU and small amount of RAM, so has limitations that will likely only get larger as time goes on.  So using this as an opportunity to move to something newer, even if not a ReadyNAS, could be a good idea.  And if you already had a solid data backup, then resurrecting the 102 wasn't a necessity.