3TB drive compatibility?

greater than 2tb drives will depend on a number of factors, the primary ones being:

GPT partition support (work in progress on x86, sparc unknown)
4k sector support (available in 4.2.12 beta for x86, sparc unknown)
possibly efi bios support (unknown if any current hardware will support this, or if it will even be an issue)

I agree with you about the 1.5 to 2.0 upgrade, and I'd rather wait for 2.5 or 3.0 drives to arrive.

x86 products I expect should be fine, but I am wary that hardware limitations may arise for sparc based units capping them at 2tb drives.

we have a long wait yet for 3tb drives, end of 2010/early 2011 from a recent news tidbit.

more info @ google and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

TeknoJnky wrote:
I agree with you about the 1.5 to 2.0 upgrade, and I'd rather wait for 2.5 or 3.0 drives to arrive.

So do I. My two NV+ are getting pretty full and I'm waiting for 2.5TB or 3TB drives.

TeknoJnky wrote:
x86 products I expect should be fine, but I am wary that hardware limitations may arise for sparc based units capping them at 2tb drives.

I hope Sparc isn't limited to 2TB drives, but if it is I guess I may end up replacing all my Sparc ReadyNAS with x86 ReadyNAS sooner than otherwise.

TeknoJnky wrote:
we have a long wait yet for 3tb drives, end of 2010/early 2011 from a recent news tidbit.

Yes and when they do come they will be qualified for x86 first, hopefully with Sparc to follow.

When you look at cost I don't think spending the money on 3tb drives is going to be a good idea.
They are going to be expensive as all get out, and the 2tb drives are dropping lower and lower.
I was at Fry's Electronics today and saw some Hitachi 2tb drives for just over $100.

The way I look at it if you are connecting drives in a NAS, the Duo, or a two bay is the least
expensive, but the least efficient way to do that. With every bay you get the versatility of
your device is going to increase.

For 2 3tb drives you might pay $300 a piece when they just come out.

You might consider buying a better NAS ... something like the ReadyNas NV 4bay, or
even springing for the great performing ReadyNAS Pioneer Pro. Also ... you can consider
other alternatives like the DLink DNS-343 a 4 bay NAS that works pretty well, or even
QNAP. The DLink is probably the best buy for efficiency unless you want really high
performance or addon services.

The readynas lets you dynamically add disks, so you can start with the 2tb and add
new disks. bhy the time it is filled up you can upgrade to the 3tb which will be cheaper.
Also ... bear in mind with RAID5 you get to actually use more of the disk space you
buy ... assuming you are set up redundantly, which is really the only way to set
these things up, unless you do not care about your data.

Every bay you add you get more of each disk contributed to actual storage ...
the ratio (n-1)/(n) approaches 1 as you add more bays ... so with 2 disks,
mirrored you use 1/2 the total space that you buy ... but with 4 disks you
use 3/4 of the disk space that you buy. With the 6 bays in my readynas
pioneer pro i get to utilize 5/6 or my disk space ... or 83% ... that is where
the real savings are.

Think about it, the mirroed 2 bays are not so great anyway .... you are in a scenario
where you could benefit from upgrading your hardware.

The migration can be tricky though ... and moving lots of data can take a long time.

I have 2 readynas nv+, one dlink-dns323, one dlink-dns343, one qnap-ts409,
and a readynas pioneer pro.

bru wrote:
When you look at cost I don't think spending the money on 3tb drives is going to be a good idea. They are going to be expensive as all get out, and the 2tb drives are dropping lower and lower.

But I already use 1.5TB disks and only getting 1.5TB of extra space by buying four more new disks is not that good in my books.

bru wrote:
With every bay you get the versatility of your device is going to increase.

That's true.

bru wrote:
For 2 3tb drives you might pay $300 a piece when they just come out.

Fair enough

bru wrote:
You might consider buying a better NAS ... something like the ReadyNas NV 4bay, or even springing for the great performing ReadyNAS Pioneer Pro.

Buying an extra NAS (and possibly a backup NAS for that) is probably what I'd do first, before upgrading to 3TB disks, but even then I may be a fairly early adopter of 3TB disks the way I'm going.

bru wrote:
then Also ... you can consider other alternatives like the DLink DNS-343 a 4 bay NAS that works pretty well, or even QNAP.

I'm used to the ReadyNAS and it does all I need. I think I'll stick with what I know.

bru wrote:
Every bay you add you get more of each disk contributed to actual storage ... the ratio (n-1)/(n) approaches 1 as you add more bays ... so with 2 disks, mirrored you use 1/2 the total space that you buy ... but with 4 disks you use 3/4 of the disk space that you buy. With the 6 bays in my readynas pioneer pro i get to utilize 5/6 or my disk space ... or 83% ... that is where the real savings are.

But once you start hitting 6 bays you need to start considering whether dual-redundancy is a good idea.
With larger capacity disks, dual disk failures are becoming more common.

bru wrote:
The migration can be tricky though ... and moving lots of data can take a long time.

Not tricky at all if moving between two ReadyNAS on the same platform:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php#How_do_I_migrate_disks_over_from_an_existing_ReadyNAS_to_another%3F.

Migrating data across your network from a Sparc ReadyNAS to a x86 ReadyNAS is doable. There are some issues to consider, but you can make it work.

When is the Readynas Pro Business new Raidiator 'firmware' for 3TB capacity drives (supporting WD30EZRSDTL/WD30EZRS) going to be out? I see there's a beta available T75. Anything newer?
Does the T75 beta support six 3TB drives for ~14TB usable capacity? anybody tried this - if so I welcome your proof and boasting :)

Take a look at the Announcements. 4.2.16 production is out. See the Release Notes: http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_x86_4_2_16_Notes

3TB drives haven't been added to the compatibility list yet but hopefully will be soon.

Using single-redundancy with 6x3TB drives doesn't seem like all that good idea to me though it would work. I'd be more inclined to use dual-redundancy.

wow, fast response and I figure somebody has tried a 18TB (6x3TB) setup for about 14Tb capacity in Xraid2/Raid5 mode, defaulted with that capacity in place with the WD30EZRSDTL/WD30EZRS models. I'd like to try but want to know for sure someone has done it successfully first... Any takers?

Anyone got a 18TB setup with six WD30EZRSDTL/WD30EZRS drives working under the newest (4.2.16 ?) Raidiator on a Readynas pro business or pro pioneer - someone must... works ok?

there are several other threads on 3tb drives, six 3tb drives would only be bout 13.5 tb (usable), not 18.

personally, I would never use single redundancy on that much data, dual redundancy would give about 10.8tb.

Interesting point, TeknoJnky, I think you worry too much, especially if you upgrade the CPU to an E6600 from the stock E2160 to decrease resynch times ~50% (not to explicitly advise this, as it violates warranty, and I know I for one want my warranty but some dont care--but I've read it works like this)

I say u worry 2 much because I've built 4 of these Readynas pro systems loaded with WD20EADS 2Tb green drives, and in all 4 I've yet to have even a single drive failure in about 2 years among the 24 drives as long as WDIDLE3 /S0 and WDTLER (TLER-ON) are used--if you dont enable these utilities, sure your drives will croak fast, watch for 200,000+ LCC's on old drives that are misconfigured! A few thousand LCC's are nothing for a well used but still super-reliable drive. These drives are super-reliable, and I expect the 3Tb Wd30EZRS to be the same or better if you use the WDIDLE3 /S0 setting on it (TLER doesnt work on the new WD 3Tb drives at least so far) plus the 3Tb drives are faster.

Yes, you're right the loaded wd30EZRS system has 13.5 to 13.6Tb capacity - tried building one this weekend with a buddy this last weekend (we needed to pool our drive resources to get all six WD30EZRS units) and it does work with all 3TB drives if you factory default with all six WD30EZRS drives in place to get about 13.5 Tb of usable capacity. Supposedly you can xraid2 "in-place" upgrade from six Wd20EADS drives, replacing one at a time and resynching, with up to 4 Wd30WZRS drives (then you have 2x2TB drives and 4x3TB drives) without factory defaulting.