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Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

Shadow1980
Aspirant

Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

I currently own a ReadyNAS Duo with 2x 1.5TB drives. (~1.3TB of usuable space)
The only real change I made was upgrading the RAM to 1GB, as it was a cheap upgrade at the time and came highly recommended by members of this forum.

I've started to get some trouble with disc space, and would quite like a 4 or 6-bay solution instead, as upgrading just the hard discs in the DUO just doesn't seem like a long-term solution. However, I've hold off from this upgrade for quite a while now as the thought of upgrading and migrating the data seems a little daunting.

Therefore, a couple of questions:
  • What product should I purchase as replacement? Considerations are;
    • Assuming 1.5TB or 2TB drives (most likely), total available disc space?

    • Costs. (Obviously) I'm in the UK, so £ makes more sense to me than US$.

    • Ease of upgrading.


In terms of upgrading, I'm not sure how to go about this. Set-up a new NAS and copy all files over?

One of the things I was considering is to stick the drives of the DUO in a 4-bay equivalent, and let it rebuild? Add two additional drives (2TB), let it re-build the raid, remove the two old drives and swap another 2x TB in and let it re-build again. Would that work? Ideally I would have 4x 2TB at that point, how much available disc space would this produce? (I assume you lose 1 drive due to the raid set-up, so that leaves ~5 TB?)

I don't really have a budget per-se, as long as the expenditure makes sense and there is value for money. Any and all advice, including something completely different to the above is appreciated. I have also not considered what to do with the existing NAS.
Message 1 of 10
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

You could migrate your disks to the NV+, but like the Duo that is limited at 2TB drives. The NV+ has the same CPU and memory as the Duo and performance should be pretty much the same.

Far better to get an Ultra, Ultra Plus or a Pro and transfer your data across your network (can't migrate disks as migrating to a different platform) to the new NAS. The Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro are much faster than the Duo/NV+, support 3TB drives and are much more future proof. Whilst you may not wish to use 3TB drives now as they are quite expensive you may well want to use them a few years or so down the track.
Message 2 of 10
PapaBear1
Guide

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

This is the age old question when needing something a bit larger or faster. Which one, and which path is the most effective in the long term. I faced this a little over a year ago and finally decided on the NVX (32 bit Intel processor discontinued in favor of the Ultra 4 with 64 bit processor) and have not regretted it. Actually while copying over the files across your network will take some time, the built in backup routines make it almost a set it, start it, go do something else and forget process.

The Ultra 4 with an Atom D410 processor (single core), 1GB of memory and diskless is #403.02 (sorry no UK pound symbol on my US keyboard) while the Ultra 4 Plus with the D510 processor (dual core) is #450.10 and the Pro 4 (same hardware as the Ultra 4 Plus) is #499.18. The advantage of the Pro 4 over the Ultra 4 Plus are the business features that cannot be added such as Active Directory, rsysnc over SSH and a few others, along with a 5 year warranty (the Ultras have a 3 year warranty). Note: Prices are as posted on Scan.co.uk.
Message 3 of 10
Shadow1980
Aspirant

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

Thank you - so with an NV+ I could migrate the discs, that is good to know.

Using dabs.com as I have an account there/very good experiences;

The ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus Diskless and ReadyNAS Ultra 6 are practically the same price. More storage means a lot more to me than raw performance, especially if they are already an upgrade to the ReadyNAS Duo. The Duo performs really well, but struggles sometimes some HQ video streaming. (Although I watched 1080p movies from it without much trouble) I'm not sure if I would make use of the performance increase between Ultra Plus and Ultra?

The ReadyNAS Ultra 4 seems ok, though is still a good £400.. At that rate I am tempted to just bite the bullet and go with an Ultra 6 for £190 more. I really regret not getting a 4-bay solution immediately, rather than the Duo, as I wouldn't be in this situation now.

As far as options go, I'm a little confused about the differences from Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro?

4-Bay;
Ultra: £407
Ultra+: £559
Pro: £470

6-Bay;
Ultra: £589
Ultra+: £716
Pro: £802

The cheapest NV+ (4 bay?) I could find was £331, comes with some fairly useless 1 TB drives that I would have to sell / give away.

With Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD204UI drives, the most financially sensible choices would be the Nv+ or Ultra's which would fully filled come to;
NV+: £551 ~5454gb
Ultra 4: £627 ~5454gb
Ultra 6: £919 ~9090gb

(Available disc space is estimate, bearing in mind 1 disc's capacity is lost in the x-raid config)

Any and all opinions welcome. (@PapaBear - you posted while I wrote this - thank you so much, that is very helpful. I will shop around a bit)
Message 4 of 10
dbott67
Guide

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

Here's an unofficial list of the CPU specs for the various ReadyNAS devices: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=499

I would definitely look at the Ultra line (or Pro, if Active Directory is a requirement).

Ultra performance specs can be found here: http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=3962#Performance

You can see that READ performance is pretty equal across the board, however, the extra drives and faster CPUs can increase the WRITE speed quite a bit:



In a nutshell, any Ultra will saturate a gigabit link when reading, while only the Ultra 4+ and Ultra6 units can get close to saturating the gigabit link when writing. Of course, in order to achieve this type of performance, you need a gigabit network and a computer that can go beyond typical desktop performance (around 60 MB/s).
Message 5 of 10
Shadow1980
Aspirant

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

@dbott67 - thank you, appreciate the insight. My entire network uses Gigabit ports and Cat5e cabling. The PC I am currently on is a Core i7 950 with Solid State Drives, so that should not be an issue either. Either way, *all* the options in that list will outperform my existing ReadyNAS Duo.

--

I've ordered the ReadyNas Ultra 6, shopped around a bit and managed to find it for £434, which I think is a pretty decent deal. I was all ready to get a 4-bay NAS due to the relative cost, but this allows for more future-proofing at the same price level.

Now for the tricky decision of hard drives...

I've found some nice Western Digital WD30EZRS 3TB for £108 each.
The alternative are Samsung HD204UI 2TB for £52 each.

Obviously the 2TB drives are far, far cheaper - but they also leave a lot of potential space untapped long-term.

I'm currently most tempted to just get 4x2TB, which makes for ~5454gb usable disc space - and add 2x 3TB once their price comes down / I need more space.

If I understand the Xraid2 correctly, 2x 3TB + 4x 2TB still makes for ~9999GB usable disc space, which is not insignificant.
(I'm using the commonly accepted 0.909 multiplier for larger hard drives to calculate their 'real' disc space, and assume 1 drive is used for redundancy, in this case the largest redundant drive available)

Total capacity if all drives were upgraded to 3TB would be ~13,635 - which I can't see myself fill any time soon.

Question is, would it be better to use all 6 bays right from the start or does this not matter a great deal?
Message 6 of 10
Shadow1980
Aspirant

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

After more deliberation I've decided to go with 6x2TB right from the start - the drives are going for a very good price right now and I just can't see myself having an issue with disc space any time soon with that set-up.

Thanks everyone for the insights. 🙂

Anyone has a suggestion on how to utilize the existing ReadyNAS Duo once the new one is up and running? It's not worth all that much any more, so I'd like to make the best out of it, it has a lot of life left in it and I'm kind of attached to it 🙂
Message 7 of 10
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

You could use the Duo to backup your most important data from your new main NAS.

I'd recommend dual-redundancy on your new NAS. The use of an additional disk's capacity for redundancy is great for peace of mind. Whilst it doesn't replace the need for backups, it does strengthen your first line of defence
Message 8 of 10
Shadow1980
Aspirant

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

Both are up and running - currently using rsync to get the files from the Duo to the new Ultra, which is going to take up to wednesday at this rate.

After that I will setup the DUO as a backup NAS, and rsync the most important shares it.

Now the real trick will be to set-up an iSCSI share and map My Documents to it, so they are always on the Ultra, with the DUO backing them up constantly. That would give me a lot of peace of mind... (I'm not sure about the best way to go about this though!)
Message 9 of 10
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Thinking of Upgrading from ReadyNAS Duo - Best options?

You could create an iSCSI target on the Duo too (there is a community add-on: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=34170), mount a target on that and use Windows software to replicate your My Documents folder onto the Duo.
Message 10 of 10
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