Hi All. I have a question about drives in my Readynas duo. I currently have two 1TB drives containing my music collection. These are running perfectly. I would like to use two 300GB drives that I have lying about for storing home movies and cine to dvd conversions on. What I would like to know is this. If I just remove my 1TB disk's and replace with 300GB, let the NAS do it's thing, and copy my movies over. When I want to access the music again is it just a case of swapping over. I do not want to do this if it will in any way cause loss of my music collection.
While that will work - in general it is not recommended.
You NAS is not designed to support a large number of disk insertions - consider that under normal use the only time you would do this is when you first setup the NAS or replace a disk, due to an upgrade or a disk failure. Further, while small, any pulling and reinserting will always result is increased risk to your data.
The choice is yours - such a swap should only be done when the NAS is off so bear in mind you would need to shutdown and reboot the NAS also
Alternatively, given the very low cost of Duos today - you might be better off just purchasing a new chassis. Not sure where you are, but here in France Amazon has a chassis listed at 125 euros. I haven't looked for other options, but that is cheaper than upgrading your current Duo to 2TB disks and gives you simultaneous access to your audio and video files
You would need to power down the NAS first obviously. The 300GB disks would need to be wiped by the NAS (you may need to delete the partitions on these using a PC first and do a factory default: http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_use_the_boot_menu)
Do bear in mind that SATA connectors are designed for a limited number of pulls and that handling disks bare you risk doing damage due to Electro Static Discharge.
Edit: beaten. The option of getting another NAS is another one worth considering. Do also note that only a couple of 300GB disk models are on the HCL for the Duo. If you don't use disks on this list you will be denied support if you have issues.
I'd also suggest looking into backing up the data on your 2x1TB array e.g. to a USB disk, a new NAS (if you get one like sphardy suggested) or some place else. If you store data on a single device it is not backed up. See Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss
Thanks for the advice. I have looked into getting a Netgear Stora for my movies but do not know if this allows bit torrent, or Transmission, downloading, any advice on this would be gratefully accepted. The number of insertions was a concern of mine as well. I am also looking at upgrading my 1TB disks as they are getting a bit full so a backup is called for in the VERY near future.
Since you are already using the ReadyNAS, I wouldn't get a Stora. The Stora is a product targeted at first time NAS users and has a completely different OS and interface which you'd need to learn.
If looking to purchase another NAS, I would get a Sparc ReadyNAS (i.e. Duo or NV+: note these support drive capacities up to 2TB) or get an x86 ReadyNAS (e.g. Ultra, Ultra Plus, Pro: these support 3TB drives) if you have a bigger budget.
