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Aspirant

Feb 04, 2016

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RN204: 2x 4TB and 1x 2TB and 1x 3 TB - Not able to use full capacity

OS: 6.4.1 Hello, I spent a lot of hours till now to bring it together without success. The netgear RAID calculator says 8.16 TB in X-Raid and Flex-Raid 5 with my combination of HDDs but I'm n...

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-MeTRiX-
Feb 06, 2016
That's excactly what I expected how it's working when buying the RN204. But this device is now on it's way back to Amazon and my new QNAP 431+ is initializing the disks right now!

Thanks all for your help!

kossboss

Guide

Feb 08, 2016

Stephen B, adding those features to Flex-RAID will not make Flex-RAID be another X-RAID. X-RAID will still have the automatic expansion feature and automatically select RAID1,5,6 depending on number of drives. Im just submittinga feature request to add more expansion options to Flex-RAID. Im not submitting the auto reshaping of XRAID from raid1 to 5 to 6 to be a feature of Flex-RAID (that will remain unique to X-RAID). So Flex-RAID will not be limited to RAID1,5,6. FlexRAID will always have the option of RAID0,1,5,6,10,50,60. XRAID only allows 1,5,6. Where as with Flex-RAID, you could select your own raid (and it will remain at that raid level) and then you would be able to expand it using the available expansion options when you add a drive[s]. X-RAID doesnt allow for RAID10,50,60, Flex-RAID does & will (if my feature requests go thru) allow for that.

So currently:

-XRAID: jbod/raid 0,1,5,6; allows varying drive sizes (Expand vertically); expands horizontally (expand raid volume by adding drive to raid). automatically selects raid level based on number of drives.

-FLEXRAID: jbod/raid0,1,5,6,10,50,60; allows changing from raid5 to raid6; if you use varying drive sizes (some space will not be used); expand btrfs volume; allows encryption;manual select of raid level; ability to be creative with how you make your raid

My feature requests would do this: (bolded the extra feature)

-FLEXRAID: jbod/raid 0,1,5,6,10,50,60; allows changing from raid5 to raid6;use up all space of varying drive sizes; expand btrfs volume (this allows for raid50,60); expand raid volume by adding drive to raid (horizonal expansion); allows encryption; manual select of raid level; ability to be creative with how you make your raid

Having an encryption key on a USB is very useful for the following use case: leaving your data ; you can plug in your USB key & power on your NAS.

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Feb 08, 2016

You should probably post your flexraid extensions in the ideas for storage area.

kossboss wrote:

Having an encryption key on a USB is very useful for the following use case: leaving your data ; you can plug in your USB key & power on your NAS.

If someone steals the NAS with the USB, then they can do an OS reinstall, and copy all my data over the network. So if I leave the key in or near the NAS, then the encryption has no security value. If I hide the key elsewhere, then I need to go physically to the NAS and insert the key before I boot it. If I lose track of that key, then I am in big trouble.

So I personally find the NAS disk encryption to be both inconvenient for me and also to have little security value. If disk encryption disabled the password reset done by the OS reinstall and was stored securely in the flash (similarly to TPM), then it would have value. Though even there, it requires the user to avoid using scheduled USB backup jobs (and to ensure that the backup button on the NAS doesn't copy data to a locally connected USB).

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Feb 08, 2016
I have already mentioned why multi-layer encrypted volumes are not possible. A separate key would be required for each RAID layer which would have a bigger impact on performance and not be practical. It would also put your data at greater risk.

You can either have multi-layer volumes or use encryption, not both.

You can connect the USB key after the NAS is booted and after a period of time the volume should mount.

You should of course make a backup of the encryption key somewhere in case anything happens to the USB key it is primarily stored on.
- StephenB
  Guru - Experienced User
  Feb 08, 2016
  Well I do see too many operational headaches with the key, and if you yield to the temptation to just leave it inserted then you lose any benefit. TPM is also a pain, but it is better thought out.
  
  mdgm wrote:
  
  I have already mentioned why multi-layer encrypted volumes are not possible. A separate key would be required for each RAID layer which would have a bigger impact on performance and not be practical. It would also put your data at greater risk.
  
  I find this explanation confusing. It seems to me that all RAID layers could be configured to use the same key value. Though I do see that multilayer could hurt performance.