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Re: EDA500 Alternative

georgeMMXII
Aspirant

EDA500 Alternative

I am looking for a expansion chassis for my RN316. My original plan was to buy an EDA500, put 5 4TB disks in it in raid5 configuration, migrate 6 TB data from another NAS close to EOL, have one NAS less to manage and have sufficient spare space available for the next year(s).

Apparently I am too late, as the EDA500 expansion chassis appears to be no longer on sale, at least not in major online stores in Germany.

And now? What to buy instead, a third party ESATA chassis? Is this (E)SATA port multiplexing generic enough and will the support for it remain in the ReadyNAS firmware?

 

Thanks.

Model: RN31600|ReadyNAS 300 Series 6- Bay
Message 1 of 5
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: EDA500 Alternative

Another ReadyNAS unit (e.g. RN426) would give much better performance than the EDA500.

 

The EDA500 uses a port multiplier.

 

Trying to get some other eSATA chassis to act like an EDA500 would not be supported by us. Even if you can get that to work we wouldn’t be able to help out with issues encountered with that.

Message 2 of 5
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: EDA500 Alternative

Look here:  ReadyNAS-Hardware-Compatibility/ReadyNAS-516-Expansion-chassis-options

 

At the original cost of the EDA500, a second 316 would certainly be a better option.  But at the fire sale price Amazon had on them, I find the EDA500 acceptable.  And the unit I tried in the above link is even cheaper.  A lot depends on the kind of data you are keeping on the external box.  Mine is all archival stuff and PC backups.

Message 3 of 5
georgeMMXII
Aspirant

Re: EDA500 Alternative

Thanks for both helpful replies. I now have two directions to think about.

Either I try out a third party ESATA port multiplier —on my own risk— or I chose a RN428 initially with a 3 disk raid5 volume and the assured upgrade path towards two 4 disk raid5 volumes. (Limiting the disk count per volume appears beneficial to me in case it ever should become necessary to move the volume to other hardware.) Taking into account the anyhow limited count of disk slots, I meanwhile tend to use 8 TB drives instead of 4 TB.

Additionally I was looking for end-of-life information for the ReadyNAS series. Several older postings point to https://www.netgear.com/landing/eol.aspx that no longer exists. More precisly: How long can I expect to get bug fixes for the RN31x and RN42x series, using the best information available today?

Finally some background information: I am a somehow advanced home user. What I really like with the ReadyNAS Firmware is the open access to its Debian familiar to me. The NAS units serve as archive for video files, mainly TV recordings in 720p. Unit A is from a different manufacturer, in use since 2011 with a 5x 2TB raid5 volume. Unit B is a RN316 in use since 2013 with a 6x 4 TB raid6 volume.

Model: RN31600|ReadyNAS 300 Series 6- Bay
Message 4 of 5
StephenB
Guru

Re: EDA500 Alternative


@georgeMMXII wrote:

More precisly: How long can I expect to get bug fixes for the RN31x and RN42x series, using the best information available today?


Netgear can't comment, so all you will hear on this is speculative guesswork.

 

The RN42x family was just launched in May, so it seems very premature to be talking about EoL.

 

Although the RN42x is replacing the RN31x family, I don't see any hint that they will stop supporting it any time soon.  They announced the end of firmware development on the NV+ v1 about five years after they stopped producing it. And in that case, all OS 4.1.x systems had been out of production for a long time.  New OS-6 platforms are still coming out.

 

The main risk with the RN31x is that it has only 2 GB of RAM (compared with 4 GB in the RN42x). Eventually that might create out-of-memory issues.  But if you stay with the existing services/features, I think you'll be ok.

 

 

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