Hi, I need to replace two 2TB disks in one of my beloved ReadyNAS DUOs (v.1). I know the official MAX size is 2TB, but has anyone ever succeeded in getting a stable 4TB X-RAID running on a "v.1 DUO" with two 4TB disks (16K sector - yes I know).
Today my system is running with Seagate Barracuda (ST2000DM001), so I was thinking of using using the Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 (4TB), but 4TB X-RAID is more important than the make and model of the disk, so if anyone has any definitive knowledge that will kill this 4TB idea of mine - OR perhaps back it up based on personal experience - I will be happy to hear about it!
Thanks in advance.
Regards LeifNie
PS: I'm sorry if this rather simple question has been asked and answered a million times before - but I just could not find it in here - maybe my bad!
The duo v1 doesn't support GPT formating - either internal or external drives. The drive will be recognized as the wrong size (and that size will be smaller than 2 TB).
What you could do is switch to jbod (one of the flexraid modes) - giving up redundancy, but getting two 2 TB volumes in return - 4 TB total storage. That would require a factory reset, so you'd need to reconfigure the NAS and reload data from backup.
Perhaps get a new NAS (for instance an RN104) with 4 TB raid-1. Then switch the duo to jbod, and use it for backup.
The missing support for GPT formatted drives - is it related to the v.1 Hardware or is it a simple NetGear business decision not to include GPT support in the Linux kernel for the DUO v.1?
Remarks: I hate to say it, but a new NAS would have to be a FreeNAS! Why? Because commercial claims from NetGear and others always include things like "made for the future" "low ownership costs", "bla. bla." - but when it comes to releasing updates that would make your original and hopefully loyal customer gain additional specs for free - like f. i. extended GPT formatted storage capacity - these firmware updates have a tendency never to be released - even when the technology is ready and free to use.
I know that the marketing people will say that such product improvements would kill the market for the newer NAS devices. They might be right, but having seen the same story over and over again, otherwise loyal customers might turn down these easy configurable turn-key products and start relying on free alternatives (like FreeNAS) - simply because these products will evolve and follow the trends set by the evolution and by new upcoming technology.
I would hate to scrap a solid and perfectly good working hardware platform just because it was not "build for the future" after all. It is a waste of money, natural resources and simply not in line with my definition of good customer care. Having said that I fully accept that a direct chip related GPT incompatibility would kill all my arguments, and if this is the case I hereby apologies for having accused the NAS industry for not caring about there customers.
...The missing support for GPT formatted drives - is it related to the v.1 Hardware or is it a simple NetGear business decision not to include GPT support in the Linux kernel for the DUO v.1?LeiNie
Hard to say, but even a "simple" business decision would take needed engineering resources into account. There is custom RAID acceleration hardware on the V1. The product was introduced in 2008, when the largest available disk drive was only 1.5 TB. It went end of life in 2012 (3 years ago) because it was no longer competitive with ARM platforms that were coming onto the market then. If I were in Netgear's shoes back in 2011 (and I never have worked for them), my first priority would have been getting the new hardware platforms to market.
There are lots of reasons why you might want to consider FreeNAS, but I think the lack of GPT support on an outdated platform is not one of them. I still have one desktop PC in service from that era (2007-2008), and it doesn't have bios support for >2 TB drives either. I don't blame HP for that.
Yep I agree about the priorities of the R&D department when it comes to new products (NetGear's bread & butter), but You hit the nail right on the spot: "The product was introduced in 2008, when the largest available disk drive was only 1.5 TB" BUT the product was still not able to support disks above 2TB. IMHO it's like introducing a non Y2K compatible product on April 1st 1999 - :shock: Ok maybe I exaggerate, and if this custom RAID controller is the main problem You got a pretty good point why not to support disk >2TB, but no matter what "Build for the future" will not be one of key-features for this product :wink:
Can anyone confirm that 2TB disk is a hardware related limit or would support of GPT and hence disks >2TB be possible on the v.1 DUO simply by including proper functionality in the compiled ReadyNAS Linux kernel?? After all the v.1 DUO firmware is still evolving (the last firmware (4.1.14) was released on October 13, 2014 so I don't think/hope the product is completely dead - Credit goes to NetGear for that!!
Yep I agree about the priorities of the R&D department when it comes to new products (NetGear's bread & butter), but You hit the nail right on the spot: "The product was introduced in 2008, when the largest available disk drive was only 1.5 TB" BUT the product was still not able to support disks above 2TB. IMHO it's like introducing a non Y2K compatible product on April 1st 1999 - :shock: Ok maybe I exaggerate, and if this custom RAID controller is the main problem You got a pretty good point why not to support disk >2TB, but no matter what "Build for the future" will not be one of key-features for this product :wink:
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. And I think your timeline is a bit off - 3 TB drives became available in late 2010/2011, so they were not on the immediate horizon in May 2008. While I would have liked it if the larger drives worked, I won't blame Netgear. Even if you go with building your own NAS, the underlying server platform you choose will have limits that you will eventually reach.
LeiNie wrote:
Can anyone confirm that 2TB disk is a hardware related limit or would support of GPT and hence disks >2TB be possible on the v.1 DUO simply by including proper functionality in the compiled ReadyNAS Linux kernel?? After all the v.1 DUO firmware is still evolving (the last firmware (4.1.14) was released on October 13, 2014 so I don't think/hope the product is completely dead - Credit goes to NetGear for that!!
Back on point, the Duo and NV+ are still getting some security and bug fixes but aren't getting new features. (We agree that credit goes to Netgear for that).
I'm not sure why you're stuck on the hardware vs kernel question, since only Netgear can do the work either way (and I think only Netgear engineering can actually answer it). If they were going to do it, it would have happened back in 2011 - when they added it to the 4.2.x products (ultra, pro, nvx).
For our customers with x86 hardware (which ran RAIDiator-x86 4.2.x) e.g. the ReadyNAS Pro we were able to do a MBR to GPT conversion. Unfortunately we could not do a similar conversion for Sparc.
Unfortunately we could not do a similar conversion for Sparc.
I guess you mean that we/you/they? could not do it on the hardware platform used in combination with the Sparc processor. IMHO the Sparc processor cannot be the problem, but as Stephen points out there might be peripherals (Non-Flashable Custom RAID controllers) on the main board that cannot handle GPT - Am I right?
by ahpsi » Thu Dec 02, 2010 4:24 pm: There's an interesting article from MPR online about Infrant and it's decision to license LEON from the European Space Agency -> http://www.kaltech.co.il/pdf/LEONSPARRAIDProcessor.pdf and of course Wikipedia on LEON -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEON.
So the design of the ReadyNAS SPARC platform was already at least 3 years old when the v1. DUO was introduced in 2008 - pretty aged technology and my initial claim the this might not have been a product "build for the future" holds true! I don't blame anybody for this - I could have been more thorough in my product research back then - and perhaps still bought my two DUOs because they look good 😮 .
Anyway looking into the Kaltech pdf it mentions that
One core is the CPU, which runs the RAIDiator operating system and other embedded software, assisted by a hardware RAID engine.
and if this RAID engine is software based (flashable) I see no obstacles for rewriting this code to support GPT - on the other hand I accept that this might not be economical feasible - unless proper GPT supporting source code exists and can be ported to this dated European Space Agency platform (sometimes the history is fascinating :roll: ).
Anyway I might just sit back and stick with the 2TB disk limit and say to my self: "It is probably possible, but no one is going to do it."
The readynas sparc platform does goes back to the original infrant x6 product (~2005). The duo was the last product based on that platform, and was the entry product for home users. At the time its performance was very competitive (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas- ... adynas-duo).
I didn't know about the European Space Agency connection, thx for sharing that.
