Got the unit used and am currently running the RAIDiator-Sparc-4.1.16 firmware.
I have 4 - 3TB Red drives.
Prior to using, I did a clean on all drives and added a single partition to each in Windows 10.
I did not format any of them prior to using in the ReadyNAS.
The Frontview recognized all drives when I set the volume up as a Raid 5, but all drives are showing as 746 GB each.
I saw this topic come up for a prior user and it looked liked the drives were already formatted prior to setting up his NAS, so I'm not sure where to go from here.
I'm sorry if I am leaving out any relevant information, so please let me know if you need anything to paint a better picture.
At this point, what firmware can I update the NAS to? Do you have a link for the compatible download (if any)? Are my 3 TB drives even supported by this model? Is there any way to get my drives to show more than the current amount of 746GB?
Are my 3 TB drives even supported by this model? Is there any way to get my drives to show more than the current amount of 746GB?
No, unfortunately your NAS doesn't support GPT formatting, and is limited to 2 TB drives. The 746 GB space is because the computations on available disk space are overflowing, and the NAS is thinking that is all that is available. There is no workround for this - the only thing you can do is use 4x2TB drives. WD20EFRX (WD Red Plus) or ST2000VN004 (Seagate Ironwolf) are suitable drives for your NAS. Enterprise drives are overkill (it isn't fast enough to take advantage of them), and many 2 TB desktop drives are SMR and should be avoided.
There are some other potential issues - the only version of SMB/CIFS it supports is being deprecated by both Apple and Microsoft, and the TLS version it uses for the web interface is also being deprecated. It can still be used, but connecting to it will become more difficult over time.
This was a great NAS back in its day, and the one I have has been very reliable over the years. But time has caught up with it - Netgear stopped producing it back in 2011 because it was no longer competitive. Not sure if you can still return your purchase or not, but you might consider doing that if you can.
There are other used ReadyNAS models that wouldn't have these restrictions. RN200 - RN600 series are the newest. Ultra and Pro Desktop NAS are older, but can be converted to run current ReadyNAS software - which can handle any size drives, and doesn't have the problems with SMB/CIFS or TLS. The Duo, Duo v2, NV+, NV+ v2, and NVX can't be converted, so I recommend avoiding those models. I'd also pass on the RN102/RN104 - it does run current software, but is somewhat underpowered.
Of all the models you suggested, which would make sense for video streaming and be future compatible with drives up to 5TB each? I anticipate buying one used, but figured I would ask. In the end, I may go with a single external HDD to run my movies from Kodi, but I would prefer the redundancy of the NAS as I had an xpenology NAS for the past 5 years.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your knowledge and opinion. Much appreciated.
Of all the models you suggested, which would make sense for video streaming and be future compatible with drives up to 5TB each? I anticipate buying one used, but figured I would ask. In the end, I may go with a single external HDD to run my movies from Kodi, but I would prefer the redundancy of the NAS as I had an xpenology NAS for the past 5 years.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your knowledge and opinion. Much appreciated.
The models I suggested can all currently handle disks up to 16 TB (and there is no reason to think they can't handle larger SATA disks as they come onto the market).
They all have a built in DLNA server, and Plex can also be installed. Though I don't use Kodi myself, I believe it accesses the NAS SMB shares, so that should also work fine.
If you are interested in Plex and require real-time transcoding, then you'd be better off with the currently shipping OS-6 models, as they have faster processors than the older Pro and Ultras. The other option (better IMO) is to deploy a plex server on a PC that maps the media shares to drive letters. None of the ReadyNAS have GPUs, which limits their transcoding performance.
Some models (RN5xx and RN6xx) support 10Gbase-T ethernet (as well as normal gigabit).
