Anyone have any real world opinions about their relative performance? Say with streaming one client and perhaps a decent amount of ISCSI activity (say four concurrent recordings)? Trying to decide if it's worth bumping up to the Pro.I realize they are old models however I'm getting the Ultra at basically the price of the included hard drive and the Pro wouldn't be that much more and since both will run OS 6 I figure I'll have fun with that... as such they aren't that old per se.

By default X-RAID2 is enabled but you can toggle than off/on using the X-RAID button under volumes before adding the second disk.

The first disk inserted determines the smallest disk size on the NAS, so if you insert the 3tb first then you won't be able to use other spare disks with smaller capacity. X-raid 2 will by default do raid1 when there are two disks, raid5 when there are more. You can disable it and use flex-raid to fine tune your choices if needed. If you want to use flex-raid disable x-raid before inserting the second disk. I think you can switch from x-raid to flex-raid but I'm not sure the reverse is possible without a factory reset or at least a volume deletion.

Yes. There's only so much performance you can get out of a gigabit ethernet connection. With gigabit the theoretical max would be about 120 MB/s. Usually anything around the 100 MB/s mark is considered to be pretty good. Of course the drive in the client machine can also be a bottleneck. If you have a SSD in the client machine that is a big help.You could get better performance on e.g. the 300 series or 516, but with a gigabit ethernet connection you'd still be limited to not too much more than what you are getting now. A key advantage of e.g. the 300 series and 516 series is being able to do more while still getting high performance.With the 716x and 10 gigabit you could of course go a lot faster again, but you'd also need a NIC that supports that for your PC.

mdgm wrote:The 300 series would be a little faster than the Ultra 2, but probably not too much. The 300 series has double the RAM (2 GB vs 1GB) and a faster CPU.CharlesR, note that you can upgrade the RAM on your Ultra 2 from 1GB to 2GB for less than $20: https://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=110&t=52557&start=15#p379994

It might show in the logs or else a# cat /proc/cpuinfowould tell you which CPU you have.I agree an Ultra 2 should outperform a 102.

RNDP2000 vs RNDU2000 Performance | NETGEAR Communities

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StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 27, 2014
If you're going with a legacy unit, you might as well pay extra for the pro 2.

I haven't seen a direct comparison of raid-1 read/write speed for the two units though.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 27, 2014
Do note that we don't support running OS6 on our legacy NAS units. So if you run into issues you may need to restore from backup. It is even more important than it would be otherwise that you maintain good backups.
CharlesR
Guide
Aug 27, 2014
I understand. It will be used more for playing around than data storage. My "critical" data will be elsewhere.
CharlesR
Guide
Aug 30, 2014
I must say it was easy to upgrade to OS 6. Of course I had no data to worry about and was using a test drive. :) I need to transfer some data off the drive I'll be using for real before I can actually begin.

Regarding OS 6 (I know I should already know the answer)... If I install just one drive (3TB) do I need to worry about how it's installed as in type of RAID/file structure? At some point I might want to install another (3TB) and will how I install the first drive determine my options? Such as with one drive can I switch between Flex-RAID and X-RAID2? Which I presume would leave all options open.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 30, 2014
By default X-RAID2 is enabled but you can toggle than off/on using the X-RAID button under volumes before adding the second disk.
xeltros
Apprentice
Aug 30, 2014
The first disk inserted determines the smallest disk size on the NAS, so if you insert the 3tb first then you won't be able to use other spare disks with smaller capacity.
X-raid 2 will by default do raid1 when there are two disks, raid5 when there are more. You can disable it and use flex-raid to fine tune your choices if needed. If you want to use flex-raid disable x-raid before inserting the second disk.
I think you can switch from x-raid to flex-raid but I'm not sure the reverse is possible without a factory reset or at least a volume deletion.
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 31, 2014
xeltros wrote:
The first disk inserted determines the smallest disk size on the NAS, so if you insert the 3tb first then you won't be able to use other spare disks with smaller capacity.
That's true for an xraid volume, but of course with flexraid you can create a new volume with a smaller disk (without losing the original volume).

xeltros wrote:
I think you can switch from x-raid to flex-raid but I'm not sure the reverse is possible without a factory reset or at least a volume deletion.
You can certainly switch to flexraid. If you have a single volume you can also switch back.
xeltros
Apprentice
Aug 31, 2014
You can switch back and forth ? That's good to know.
if I have two drives in raid0, when switching back to x-raid it would expect raid1, 5 or maybe 6. How will it correct the problem ?
if I have a raid 5 with 4 disks can I convert it to a raid5 3 disks with that ? (given there is enough space)
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 31, 2014
xeltros wrote:
You can switch back and forth ? That's good to know.
if I have two drives in raid0, when switching back to x-raid it would expect raid1, 5 or maybe 6. How will it correct the problem ?

You couldn't. Well even if the GUI lets you it would stay at RAID-0 and you couldn't expand it.
xeltros wrote:

if I have a raid 5 with 4 disks can I convert it to a raid5 3 disks with that ? (given there is enough space)

No. Flex-RAID volumes are not shrinkable either. However using Flex-RAID you can have multiple volumes.
CharlesR
Guide
Aug 31, 2014
I now have the drive installed (the one I will be using) and I'm copying files over to it via a SMB Share and iSCSI. While both are underway I'm getting up to 90 MB/s with SMB and less than 1 MB/s with iSCSI? I haven't tried transferring files via iSCSI by itself yet but I'm hoping it's just being taxed by the SMB activity. I have Snapshots turned off.

OK looking around I found if I Disable Sync Writes I jump to 17 MB/s while it's still fighting with the SMB copying which drops down to 77 MB/s or so...