I have an old RN31400 that works fine but I need more storage. Is it worth swapping all the drives? I'll do further research but curious if anyone has any insights about its limitations.
Model: RN31400|ReadyNAS 300 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
I have an old RN31400 that works fine but I need more storage. Is it worth swapping all the drives?
If the drives are healthy, it is often cheaper to upgrade a pair of drives initially to get the extra space. That also makes it cheaper the next time you need to expand.
For instance, if you have 4x3TB (9 TB of storage), and you want to increase to 12 TB then you could either
upgrade to 4x4 TB
upgrade to 2x6 TB + 2x3 TB
Both give the same amount of space.
Four 4 TB WD Red Plus drives would cost about $280 (current US Amazon prices).
Two 6 TB WD Red Plus drives could cost about $220, and you could add another 4 TB later on by upgrading a third drive for another $110.
So price out a couple of options before you settle on the best upgrade for you.
I'll do further research but curious if anyone has any insights about its limitations.
If you are asking about the NAS itself -
IMO the NAS is still suitable for for home use and a gigabit network. Sustained large file transfers are limited by the network (assuming healthy drives).
Reliability is another aspect to consider. In part this depends on the age of your particular NAS. The RN314 was launched in 2013, so it could be about 10 years old. The fan, power supply, and memory can be replaced if they fail. But other parts not so much.
Netgear is still providing security updates to the software, but it's pretty clear they are dropping out of the NAS business. Product support is harder to access, and many OS-6 ReadyNAS (including the RN314) are already marked as end-of-life.
Personally I'd continue using it if it seems to be in good shape. But definitely pay attention to your backup strategy (which is important for all NAS, no matter who makes them). One possible path is to get a second NAS (likely from another vendor) for your main NAS, and repurpose the RN314 as a backup.
