× NETGEAR will be terminating ReadyCLOUD service by July 1st, 2023. For more details click here.
Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
Reply

Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Laudz
Aspirant

Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Hi,

I've been using a very dependable Ultra4 unit for years until it recently ran out of space. I purchased a RN104 with 4x4TB drives as a replacement. The transfer of data took a very long time and the subsequent performance of the RN104 unit has not been great. Significant number of connection losses streaming large media files over an NFS service!!!!!

As everything worked fine before with the Ultra4, I figured I should just replace the RN104 with a RN316 or RN424 as these units should not have an issue dealing with a single high bit rate media stream.

I am aware that the RN104 is an ARM based unit where the likely replacements are Intel based. Does this represent an issue if I want to physically move all the disks in the X-RAID over to an Intel based ReadyNAS? I want to avoid the painful copy process that I went through last time.

Thanks for your help.

Model: RN104|ReadyNAS 100 Series
Message 1 of 6

Accepted Solutions
Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Hi @Laudz

 

Welcome to the Community!

 

Migrating a ReadyNAS OS6 unit to another OS6 Unit is possible but since you are using an ARM based unit and planning to transfer to an Intel based model then possibly the Apps installed will be the one not working. At least uninstall the Apps first then just install the x86 version of the App once the volume has been migrated.

 

A full backup of your data or if you have a regular backup scheduled is always recommended.

 

Please see this article.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Regards

 

View solution in original post

Message 2 of 6

All Replies
Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Hi @Laudz

 

Welcome to the Community!

 

Migrating a ReadyNAS OS6 unit to another OS6 Unit is possible but since you are using an ARM based unit and planning to transfer to an Intel based model then possibly the Apps installed will be the one not working. At least uninstall the Apps first then just install the x86 version of the App once the volume has been migrated.

 

A full backup of your data or if you have a regular backup scheduled is always recommended.

 

Please see this article.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

Regards

 

Message 2 of 6
Laudz
Aspirant

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Thanks for the info Mark_V.

I have no apps installed on the RN104, so I will just backup the data and move the drives across.

I thought it might be a bit more complicated as I thought the OS was stored on the drives boot partition, and this would be an ARM binary. Not sure how the ReadyNAS units running Intel firmware understand and use the ARM ReadyOS6 binary.

 

Good to know that the Netgear software engineering team have made this seemless.

Message 3 of 6
StephenB
Guru

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?


@Laudz wrote:

Not sure how the ReadyNAS units running Intel firmware understand and use the ARM ReadyOS6 binary. ... Good to know that the Netgear software engineering team have made this seamless.

 


It's actually a bit more complicated than that - x86 OS-6 NAS use btrfs for the OS partition, and the arm units use ext.

 

Both boot loaders see that the disks have the "wrong" OS installed, and both can convert the OS to the other platform type (and file system) while preserving the settings.  Netgear must have put quite a bit of effort into making that seamless - I agree it is great that they did. 

 

Handling the apps would be impractical, since they aren't developed by Netgear, and several are only available on one platform.

Message 4 of 6
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?

Actually the OS partition will stay as EXT if you move the disks from ARM to x86. Of course if you were to do a factory reset (wipes all data, settings, everything) that would change, but you shouldn't need to do that.

Message 5 of 6
StephenB
Guru

Re: Can I move drives between an ARM based RN104 to an Intel ReadyNAS unit?


@mdgm-ntgr wrote:

Actually the OS partition will stay as EXT if you move the disks from ARM to x86. 


Thx for clarifying that!

Message 6 of 6
Top Contributors
Discussion stats
  • 5 replies
  • 1117 views
  • 1 kudo
  • 4 in conversation
Announcements