NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RN212 disk replacement - both at once
RN212 with filled-up 2TB Toshiba drives. Purchased two Seagate Ironwolf ST12000VNZ008 12TB replacement drives. Backed up the RN212, powered down, and removed the 2 2TB drives. Installed the 2 12...
With 2 x 12TB new drives, system says it will take over 24 hours to "re-sync". This is without any data, just new empty drives. Yikes.
Seems this isn't much better than just hot-swapping one at a time when you consider the time it took to back up the original 2TB. With 4 drives I can understand the logic of backing up and then copying back (see RN314 post), but with 2 drives I'm now questioning the wisdom of this path. Crazy how long these things take to register all their blocks.
The Ironwolf 12TB's are pretty noisy. There was a stretch during initial boot-up/config where the drives sounded like a screeching chalkboard. Unnerving. Even in quieter times, like now during re-syncing, they click away and are significantly noisier than the WD Red 4TB's I just installed in another NAS. I wouldn't recommend Ironwolf's in an office setting if noise is an issue. They aren't as bad as my old Toshiba 1TB enterprise drives (those were the loudest drives I've ever used, by far - like hammers to a nail all day long), but if you're moving data around they will become annoying, fast.
jimk1963 wrote:
With 2 x 12TB new drives, system says it will take over 24 hours to "re-sync". This is without any data, just new empty drives. Yikes.
RAID operates "below" the file system to provide a virtual disk of block storage. So it takes about the same amount of time whether the drive is empty or full.
In your specific case, the NAS is copying every block in disk 1 to disk 2 (to create the mirror). That will take a while.
jimk1963 wrote:
Seems this isn't much better than just hot-swapping one at a time when you consider the time it took to back up the original 2TB. With 4 drives I can understand the logic of backing up and then copying back (see RN314 post), but with 2 drives I'm now questioning the wisdom of this path.
As far as speed goes, it is a wash in your case. Resyncing via hot-swapping would sync 14 TB of data, not just 12. But if it went well, you'd avoid the copy back. Note you should do the backup anyway.
However, there is still some benefit in starting clean. One benefit is that if something goes wrong you can power down the NAS, reinsert your original disks, and then start over.
Minor update to finish off thread. Two Ironwolf 12TB's successfully installed/re-sync'd, have not re-populated them yet with data.
Ran speed tests using NASTester 1.7, ATTO Benchmark, Black Magic...
Original Toshiba 2TB 7200RPM disks were fetching around 230MB/s read, 110MB/s write.
New Ironwolf's (also 7200RPM) are fetching around 195MB/s read, 105MB/s write.
All benchmark tools show a similar decline in speed vs. the older (and much smaller) Toshiba disks. I suspect the disk size is the main driver here, although I have noticed on benchmarking web sites that Ironwolf's are not best in class re: speed.
Considered sending the Ironwolf's back for some WD Gold 10TB's (or 12TB's), benchmarks show these to be about 20% faster. I'm still in the 30 day return period so am noodling on that... If anyone has experience with WD Gold's to share, I'm all ears. Particularly curious about real-life noise. The Ironwolf's are decidely mediocre on that front.
But overall, bottom line is that I've more or less tapped this RN212 for all I'm gonna get with its dual-1GbE ports and low-end CPU. If I want any better than this, will require a new chassis altogether, with 10GbE or a fast serial port (USB3.x, Thunderbolt, et al).
I had two 4TB WD golds (from a NAS with 5 and one HGST) fail shortly after warranty expiration (one at 1 month after, the other at 6ish). They both worked right up till they didn't. No ATA errors, re-allocated sectors, etc. Just BAM!, the knock of death. But the other 3 are doing fine (still no errors) almost two years later. Makes one understand why most enterprises replace around the time the warranty expires.
The NAS was run continuously, BTW, with drive spin-down enabled at 30 min of inactivity. They are now in a rack mount unit, which does not support spin-down. They were all from the same lot, so maybe I just got unlucky.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
