Forum Discussion

Aspirant

May 05, 2017

Upgrade options for ReadNAS Pioneer Pro

I'm after some advice from fellow ReadyNAS owners. I have a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer Edition with 5 x 2TB drives and one bay empty. The unit (Model#: RNDP600E) is running 4.2.30 with 1024 MB [4-5-5...

ReadyNAS OS 6 on Legacy models

Sandshark

Sensei

May 07, 2017

You do not need to update the BIOS just to move to OS6. But since it's easier to do it under OS4.2.x, you may want to. If you plan to put in a faster processor, some of them do require the update. You can speed your Pro Pioneer up quite a lot with a faster processor. You may want to bump the memory up to at least 2GB, too.

I have 2 ProBE's and two Pro6's running OS6 and have had no issues with the fans since the early days. Mine are the stock fans or equivalent replacements (not replaced with slower/ lower noise ones). I've not moved to 6.7.1 on my 6-bay units yet, though; I'm still at 6.6.0.

I don't have anything still runing 4.2.x, but I don't think there is any real limitation on the drive size. I think I saw a thread some time ago where somebody put a 6 or 8TB in an NVX with no issue (except that the NVX is pretty slow by today's standards).

StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
May 07, 2017
Sandshark wrote:

I don't have anything still runing 4.2.x, but I don't think there is any real limitation on the drive size. I think I saw a thread some time ago where somebody put a 6 or 8TB in an NVX with no issue (except that the NVX is pretty slow by today's standards).

There are two expansion limits with 4.2

a volume cannot expand over 16 TiB

a volume cannot expand more than 8 TiB from its starting size.

Both create headaches if you add larger drives or try to use mixed sizes with larger drives. Doing a factory default with large drives that are all the same size will generally work with OS 4.2.
- Sandshark
  Sensei
  May 08, 2017
  Obviously, while not hard limits, those constraints are good reasons to seriously consider OS6.x. I never ran OS 6.x on an original Pro with the orignal processor and RAM. I do have it on an Ultra6, whihc proobably sin't a lot faster, and it's fast enough for simple NAS use (it's a backup). I don't think I'd want to run a lot of apps on it.
  - bdlhome
    Aspirant
    May 09, 2017
    
    Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it.
    
    I don't really run any apps on the pro, so maybe I should try just an OS upgrade to start. I have a 316 unit as well so another advantage would be having both on the same OS.