I currently have the Ultra 2 Plus with two 2TB Hitachi HDD's and am happy to report that with the help of the excellent support I received from this forum I have it running without issue. I am considering an upgrade to the Ultra 4 Plus and have the following questions: 1. If I were to load up the Ultra 4 Plus with four 2TB HDD's and use the X-RAID configuration for redundant backup, what is going to be my maximum actual storage capacity? I'm assuming it is going to be 4TB but wanted to confirm. Also, is there another RAID type that would allow for higher storage capacity than 4TB using four 2TB drives (while still maintaining a high level of data security) or would I just need to get higher capacity hard drives? 2. I am going to backup all data and remove the two HDD's I have in the Ultra 2 Plus and install these drives into the Ultra 4 Plus to start. During the initial setup of the Ultra 4 Plus will it need to re-format the drives thereby erasing all data or is there a way to set up the X-RAID without erasing the data on the HDD's? 3. Regarding future expansion, when I am ready to add two more HDD's to the Ultra 4 Plus do they have to be the exact same model of Hitachi HDD's? 4. Finally can someone offer any thoughts on the "Link Aggregation" feature using the two ethernet ports. Does this improve performance in a home use environment? Any other thoughts or tips relating to upgrading to a higher capacity NAS are appreciated. Thank you in advance for everyone's input and help!

Steve 46 wrote:1. If I were to load up the Ultra 4 Plus with four 2TB HDD's and use the X-RAID configuration for redundant backup, what is going to be my maximum actual storage capacity? I'm assuming it is going to be 4TB but wanted to confirm.For the default single drive failure protection you would get 6 TB of available storage, not 4. If you went with protection against two drive failures you would get 4 TB. It is best not to think about this as "backup" - you should still have an independent backup.Steve 46 wrote:2. I am going to backup all data and remove the two HDD's I have in the Ultra 2 Plus and install these drives into the Ultra 4 Plus to start. During the initial setup of the Ultra 4 Plus will it need to re-format the drives thereby erasing all data or is there a way to set up the X-RAID without erasing the data on the HDD's? Since they are both in the same family, you should be able to simply more the drives over with no problem. You should make a backup first though. However, there is a benefit to doing a factory default/drive wipe with all four HDDs installed. There is an 8 TB ceiling on expansion. So if you start with 2 TB available storage, you won't be able to expand beyond 10 TB. However, if you factory default with all the drives installed, you will start with 6 TB of available storage, allowing expanstion up to 14 TB.Steve 46 wrote:3. Regarding future expansion, when I am ready to add two more HDD's to the Ultra 4 Plus do they have to be the exact same model of Hitachi HDD's? No.Steve 46 wrote:4. Finally can someone offer any thoughts on the "Link Aggregation" feature using the two ethernet ports. Does this improve performance in a home use environment? Any other thoughts or tips relating to upgrading to a higher capacity NAS are appreciated. Link aggregation is only applicable on the Pro line, as it is a business feature. So you will not get it on an ultra plus. It won't improve performance for a single user, though there is an improvement if you have multiple devices accessing the NAS at the same time. It is nice to have, but in my view the main reasons for home users to consider the Pro is the generally faster CPUs and the longer warranty.

X-RAID2 on 2-bay and 4-bay ReadyNAS is the single-redundancy variant. The dual-redundant option is available on the 6-bay systems, but there is the option to use Flex-RAID RAID-10 on 4-bay systems.3. Be sure to choose disks from the Hard Disk HCL. NetGear can and will deny support if you use drives outside this list. You can use multiple different drive models in the NAS.4. As mentioned by StephenB. Link Aggregation is only available on the Pro line. Even if it was on the Ultra models you'd be unlikely to see much (if any) of a performance benefit anyway (with the exception of the Ultra 6 Plus). For a performance benefit from teaming you need to choose a mode that provides a performance benefit and have multiple client machines accessing the NAS simultaneously and using different protocols. It is possible to install a community add-on to enable Teaming on the Ultra/Ultra Plus models but this is unsupported. I use it and find it works for me on the Ultra 6 but this is not for the average user.

Thank you for the informational replies. Stephen B, If I am understanding you correctly (regarding max expansion capacity to 14TB) if I load up all four 2TB drives now and do a drive wipe I will get 6TB capacity with the ability to remove those four 2TB drives and replace them with a combination of larger drives totaling 14TB (without having to do another factory default/wipe). Is that correct? If that is the case then I will most likely just buy two more drives and install all four now to maximize storage capacity. I would be good to go for a while with 6TB available space. Regarding X-RAID, I understand that is the default single drive failure protection configuration. So if I have four drives loaded and one fails I would still retain all my data? I also understand that one drive is for parity information but not really understanding how one drive can protect the information on the three other drives. What if the parity drive fails? All comments on Link Aggregation are noted. Just wanted to make sure if it was something I should be utilizing. I may have been asking about the wrong feature though. I was wondering why the Ultra 2/4 Plus units have two ethernet ports. Thank you,

Steve 46 wrote:Thank you for the informational replies. Stephen B, If I am understanding you correctly (regarding max expansion capacity to 14TB) if I load up all four 2TB drives now and do a drive wipe I will get 6TB capacity with the ability to remove those four 2TB drives and replace them with a combination of larger drives totaling 14TB (without having to do another factory default/wipe). Is that correct?That's correct. Of course you'd remove one drive at a time then add a higher capacity disk, wait for resync etc. to complete before replacing next disk.Steve 46 wrote:Regarding X-RAID, I understand that is the default single drive failure protection configuration. So if I have four drives loaded and one fails I would still retain all my data? I also understand that one drive is for parity information but not really understanding how one drive can protect the information on the three other drives. What if the parity drive fails?X-RAID uses a dedicated parity disk (with four disks this is effectively RAID-4). However you have X-RAID2 which has distributed parity. X-RAID2 with four equally sized disks is like RAID-5.Think of it like this:A = 1/3 B + 1/3 C + 1/3 DB = 1/3 A + 1/3 C + 1/3 DC = 1/3 A + 1/3 B + 1/3 DD = 1/3 A + 1/3 B + 1/3 CIf any one disk fails data remains intact because the data on the failed disk is spread amongst the other disks. Now the same principles apply as you start to add higher capacity disks.With say 2x2TB + 2x3TBYou would have an additional RAID-1 layer of 2x1TB on the 3TB disks. Remember an X-RAID2 array can only expand when redundant space can be added so if all drive bays are full with disks of equal size you need two higher capacity disks.Have a look at X-RAID2 in Action (though this animation is for the 6-bay models the same principles apply on the four-bay models and the 2-bay models).Steve 46 wrote:I may have been asking about the wrong feature though. I was wondering why the Ultra 2/4 Plus units have two ethernet ports. Very similar to the Pro Series devices hardware wise. Ultra 2 Plus and Pro 2 have same hardware, Ultra 4 Plus and Pro 4 have same hardware. You can use the two NICs to connect to two networks or for manual failover. You can even make two connections to the same network.

Steve 46 wrote:Regarding X-RAID, I understand that is the default single drive failure protection configuration. So if I have four drives loaded and one fails I would still retain all my data? I also understand that one drive is for parity information but not really understanding how one drive can protect the information on the three other drives. What if the parity drive fails? As mdgm explains, xraid-2 distributes the parity blocks. Though even if it did not, the parity blocks can be recomputed from the data blocks, as long as the data blocks are intact. Distributing parity blocks just evens out the reads and writes across the drives (which helps performance, and evens drive wear).More details if you want them: The 4-drive raid array is organized as horizontal stripes, with each stripe containing one parity block and three data blocksblock 1, block 2, block 3, parity block 5, block 6, parity, block 4block 9, parity, block 7, block 8parity, block 10, block 11, block 12The way the parity works is thatblock 1 XOR block 2 XOR block 3 XOR parity = 0XOR is an "exclusive or" operation, but you can envision it as a strange form of addition.block 1 + block 2 + block 3 + parity = 0When a disk fails (say disk 2), the NAS can compute the missing block by solving the equation above.block 2 = 0 - block1 - block3 - parityWith XOR, this turns out to simplify to block 2 = block1 XOR block3 XOR parityThe way this is set up, no matter which disk fails, the disk is recovered by XORing the other three. With RAID-6 (dual redundancy) the math is more complicated, and amounts to solving 2 simultaneous equations. Each stripe has a second "parity" block sometimes called Q, which is computed using from the data blocks using a different equation. With two drive failures, you end up with two equations with two unknowns - which the NAS has to solve to recover the disks.

Upgrade to Ultra 4 Plus, Max storage capacity

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StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
May 18, 2012
Steve 46 wrote:
I also see a share created for Steve_C (that is my user name) even though there is no Steve_C share in the share listing in Frontview
The NAS creates a private share for each user. It doesn't show up in Frontview (which in m view is a mistake, as the admin should be able to manage all shares.)
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
May 18, 2012
Not a mistake IMO.

You can go to Security > User & Group Accounts > Preferences and enable/disable private home shares. Private home shares are accessible by the user and the "admin" (Frontview) user only.

Steve 46 wrote:
I also see a share created for Steve_C (that is my user name) even though there is no Steve_C share in the share listing in Frontview

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

May 19, 2012

mdgm wrote:
Not a mistake IMO.

You can go to Security > User & Group Accounts > Preferences and enable/disable private home shares. Private home shares are accessible by the user and the "admin" (Frontview) user only.

mdgm wrote:
Not a mistake IMO. You can go to Security > User & Group Accounts > Preferences and enable/disable private home shares. Private home shares are accessible by the user and the "admin" (Frontview) user only.

I only use the built-in admin account. I cannot see the admin home share from FrontView at all, I can only access it from windows explorer.

So if I used it, I wouldn't be able to fix up permissions, etc. via Frontview. That is what I think is a mistake.

Steve_46
Aspirant
May 19, 2012
mdgm, thanks for the tip on disabling the private share.

StephenB, As a side note and in question to you saying you only use the built in admin account, I remember that when I first got the Ultra 2 Plus I posted a question about the "C" share being created and if I was supposed to save files to that or to the shares that I created and also how to not see it in Finder when I connect to the NAS. mdgm informed me that the "C" share was where the NAS actually stores the files and that it is visible in Finder when I log in under "admin", that I should save my files to the shares I created, and that I should create myself as a non-admin user (which I did as Steve_C) so I wouldn't see the "C" share anymore. Anyway, my point is that I thought I read somewhere that if you log in as admin and make changes to files, etc. that it could create permission issues for those not logging in as admin and who have access to the same files. I know I'm being vague but it was just a fleeting memory of something that I read. Is there any validation to this?

Also, one other question. I use an Airport Extreme router and have given my new Ultra 4 Plus an IP address DHCP Reservation based on the Ultra 4's MAC address. I also set the static IP address in Frontview>Network>Interfaces> Use values below. Should I leave the IPv4 assignment set to "Use values from a DHCP server" and just let the Airport Extreme hand out the same DHCP Reserved IP address? It's working the way I have it setup now but I just wanted to make sure if this is the best way.

Thank you!

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

May 19, 2012

Steve 46 wrote:
StephenB, As a side note and in question to you saying you only use the built in admin account, I remember that when I first got the Ultra 2 Plus I posted a question about the "C" share being created and if I was supposed to save files to that or to the shares that I created and also how to not see it in Finder when I connect to the NAS. mdgm informed me that the "C" share was where the NAS actually stores the files and that it is visible in Finder when I log in under "admin", that I should save my files to the shares I created, and that I should create myself as a non-admin user (which I did as Steve_C) so I wouldn't see the "C" share anymore. Anyway, my point is that I thought I read somewhere that if you log in as admin and make changes to files, etc. that it could create permission issues for those not logging in as admin and who have access to the same files. I know I'm being vague but it was just a fleeting memory of something that I read. Is there any validation to this?

Steve 46 wrote:
StephenB, As a side note and in question to you saying you only use the built in admin account, I remember that when I first got the Ultra 2 Plus I posted a question about the "C" share being created and if I was supposed to save files to that or to the shares that I created and also how to not see it in Finder when I connect to the NAS. mdgm informed me that the "C" share was where the NAS actually stores the files and that it is visible in Finder when I log in under "admin", that I should save my files to the shares I created, and that I should create myself as a non-admin user (which I did as Steve_C) so I wouldn't see the "C" share anymore. Anyway, my point is that I thought I read somewhere that if you log in as admin and make changes to files, etc. that it could create permission issues for those not logging in as admin and who have access to the same files. I know I'm being vague but it was just a fleeting memory of something that I read. Is there any validation to this?

I think whenever you have multiple users with write access to a folder, you have the potential to create permissions and ownership issues. There are ACL settings for the share which can prevent these issues, and also the "advanced options" tool to reset owner, group, and access rights. Of course, since I only access it with the admin account, I shouldn't run into those multi-user issues. Though I have needed the "advanced options" tool occasionally. Note I don't normally "C" directly (unless I am moving a lot of data between folders).

Steve 46 wrote:
Also, one other question. I use an Airport Extreme router and have given my new Ultra 4 Plus an IP address DHCP Reservation based on the Ultra 4's MAC address. I also set the static IP address in Frontview>Network>Interfaces> Use values below. Should I leave the IPv4 assignment set to "Use values from a DHCP server" and just let the Airport Extreme hand out the same DHCP Reserved IP address? It's working the way I have it setup now but I just wanted to make sure if this is the best way.

The best way is to have the Ultra set to "user values from a DHCP server" and have the router reserve the IP. Then if you swap out your router later on (or change your IP address scheme) you won't accidentally lose access to the Ultra.

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Upgrade to Ultra 4 Plus, Max storage capacity

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