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RN42800 new install with 8 HGST NAS 8TB Drives how to set up as X-Raid with Raid 5
Have a new RN42800 with drives arriving in the next day or two and want to set it up with X-Raid in Raid5 format. From what I've seen in the Netgear Raid Calculator, it appears the system will set u...
With your 8x8GB with RAID5 you will get 56GB of the 64GB, while the RAID6 solution will render 48GB usable space for you.
However you could see the loss of usable space as some kind of cost for insurance against failure of the complete array and hence complete loss of all data on it.
With RAID5 one of the 8 disks can safely fail and your array will still work in a degraded mode until you replace the one broken disk with a healthy one. Should a second drive fail before the repair your whole data array would be gone.
With RAID6 even 2 of 8 disks could safely fail and your data array would be still function in degraded mode. The status of the array would return to healthy after you would have installed the replacements, finally
With the increasing number of drives in an array the probability of one of them failing is just increasing. Therefore NETGEAR's policy to automatically configure an array of >=6 as RAID6 has a good reason and seems to be very wise.
Depending on the importance of the data you are going to put on your array you might want to stick with RAID6, though.
>>With your 8x8GB with RAID5 you will get 56GB of the 64GB, while the RAID6 solution will render 48GB usable space for you.
I was using the Netgear Raid Calculator which shows 8x8 in X-Raid as 43.6 and Flex-Raid Level 5 at 50.8 which to me is losing an additional drive or that the "extra" protection costs the same as one 8TB HGST NAS drive.
That's just too costly for my purposes, these are media files and while I wouldn't want to lose them, the extra protection for two disk failures is too high.
Sorry for the confusion. For simplicity I was using TebiBytes while Netgear uses true TeraBytes in its calculator. Here is a link to shed a light on the difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebibyte
As long as you are conscious about the risks all is fine. Good luck with the installion and lots of fun with your media hog.
johnw248 wrote:
I was using the Netgear Raid Calculator which shows 8x8 in X-Raid as 43.6 and Flex-Raid Level 5 at 50.8 which to me is losing an additional drive or that the "extra" protection costs the same as one 8TB HGST NAS drive.
There are two different units used for disk space. Manufacturers use TB (1000*1000*1000*1000 bytes), most operating systems use TiB (1024*1024*1024*1024 bytes). Unfortunately most software (including ReadyNAS) mislabel the TiB (calling it TB). This mislabeling didn't matter much in the ancient times when 2 GB was a large disk. But the difference today (with 8-12 TB drives) is considerable.
8x8 RAID-5 gives you 56 TB (ignoring a bit of overhead), which is the same as ~50.9 TiB. 8x8 RAID-6 gives you 48 TB, which is the same as ~43.7 TiB. The Netgear RAID calculator does account for the overhead I generally ignore, so it's numbers are a slightly smaller.
johnw248 wrote:
...which to me is losing an additional drive or that the "extra" protection costs the same as one 8TB HGST NAS drive.
That's just too costly for my purposes, these are media files and while I wouldn't want to lose them, the extra protection for two disk failures is too high.
That is your call of course.
Either way you should consider your future storage needs. Horizontal expansion (filling empty slots) is considerably cheaper per TB gained than vertical expansion (replacing working disks with larger ones). So filling all the slots when you purchase is usually not the best long-term strategy.
For example, 8 TB HGST disks cost about $250 (US amazon pricing), while the 10 TB version costs about $350. 12 TB are about $430.
6x10TB would cost $2100 up front and give you 50 TB of RAID-5 storage. 8x8TB costs $2000, and gives you 56 TB of storage. That's $100 less up front, and of course more space up front.
But if you need to expand your NAS to 60 TB later, then the total costs change. Expanding 6x10TB to 60 TB costs you $350 for one more 10 TB disk - 60 TB for $2450 total. And you'd still have one more slot to expand again - giving you 70 TB for $2800.
Expanding 8x8TB to 60 TB would require replacing two 8 TB drives with 12 TB models - $860 at current prices or 60 TB for $2860 total. And going to 68 TB after that would require you to spend another $860 (replacing two more 8 TB drives with 12 TB models) - 68 TB for $3720.
So if your media library is growing, then you should consider starting with 10 TB or possibly even 12 TB disks, and leave some empty slots for future expansion.
UPDATE
I installed the 8x8 HGST drive set and when through first set-up on the 428 this morning. As expected the drives all lit up and the unit booted and I discovered it in ReadyCLOUD. All good so far.
When I clicked on the gear on the volume destroy was greyed out. The unit shipped with 6.7.1. I upgraded it to 6.9.3 to match the rest of the units and set the pass word and ReadyCLOUD. On reboot the Destroy was available however when I tried it, it failed.
Perhaps it was too soon (less than 1% resync.)
Wed Apr 25 2018 7:28:03 Volume: Volume data deletion failed.
I did get a message that I was trying to change from X-raid and then I elected to cancel and now it looks like I'm back to resyncing for the next 21 hours or so. (Seems pretty fast but this is my first 400 series unit). So once the volume is sync'd should I try it again?
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