I have a Ultra 2+ with 2 x 2TB Drives which are on the HCL. I don't see any 4TB Drives on the HCL for that device and we really need around 4TB Storage.
My options are to find out if there are any working 4TB drives that work with this, or switch to a 4 bay solution.
Some users have found 4TB disks to work but YMMV. If you have issues and you are using drives outside the compatibility list NetGear can and will deny support
I decided I couldn't really justify the extra cost for 2 x 4TB and especially since it's not supported officially yet and I've had issues in the past, would someone mind answering two additional questions:
I have 2 x ST32000542AS right now.
Options in my price range for 3TB Drives are the WD Red 3TB and the ST3000DM001 Seagate which would be better/faster?
Next question, can I just replace 1 of these drives at a time and wait for the rebuild to occur and then replace the other, and will this effectively "expand" the array to be 3TB?
Personally I would avoid the Seagate. Search the forums here for "ST3000DM001" and read through the posts.
When replacing drives with XRAID2/single redundancy you have to replace one at a time, and wait for full resync before replacing the next. I do this with the NAS running. It should expand to 3 TB after the second drive resyncs.
It's always a good idea to update your backup before replacing/adding drives.
I have been offered the following to upgrade my current nas (Ultra 2 Plus) from a 2 bay to a 4 bay..
NV+ v2 4 Bay Unit Ultra 4 Plus
There is a $250 difference in price. If I went with the NV+ V2 would I notice much/any performance decrease or features that I am likely to miss for home use?
It really depends what features you are actually using, but there will be also performance difference... :wink:
Sorry I don't understand what you mean by also performance? Is there some sort of benchmark I could refer to?
Basically I use a nas as a device to storage backups onto and then we copy from the nas to usb and take offsite. I want file copies to be pretty reasonably quick.
The ultra 4 plus is fully compatible with your ultra 2, so you can migrate the disks over.
The NV+ v2 is a completely different platform, with a newer management interface. It is a bit slower than your current NAS, and the feature set is somewhat different. There is a comparison chart here: http://www.netgear.com/images/ReadyNAS_ ... -57079.pdf
Thanks StephenB that helped put things into perspective.
I replaced my 2 x 2TB in the unit last night one at a time. The first resynced at 80-85MB/s the second time at 130-144MB/s total time across both drives about 8 hours which seemed a LONG time.
Then it wanted to reboot to expand the array which it did, then it wanted to re-Sync AGAIN which is said to take another 5 hours!
Anyways, at least it didn't refuse to boot like my old RND2000 did twice after array expansions which required netgear to login to fix. 🙂
I've decided I'd install 2 x 3TB which should buy me another year and then decide how I feel about moving to a 4 Bay solution at a later date, I definitely don't want anything significantly slower than what I have already.
