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RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

broad01
Tutor

RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

I just want to confirm.  I have a RN104 running 6.4.1 in X-RAID (RAID 5).  It currently has 4 x 4TB drives installed with one volume.  I have ordered 4 x 8TB IronWolf drives which are on the Hard Disk Compatibility List.

 

Will my system support these drives at full capacity and once installed provide a single 24TB volume (accepting it will be a little smaller like 21TB or 22TB).

 

I realise I will need to replace each drive one at a time and allow it to complete a full resync (which with these sizes may take days!!)

 

Do I need to format the blank drives or will the system do that automatically for me?

 

Many thanks

 

Adam

Model: RN104|ReadyNAS 100 Series
Message 1 of 16

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Yes. You need to be running 6.4.x (or later) to support volumes > 16TB on the RN104.

 

The NAS will need to wipe the disks. If they are unformatted it should wipe it and start syncing right away. Wait for the resync to complete before replacing the next disk.

View solution in original post

Message 2 of 16

All Replies
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Yes. You need to be running 6.4.x (or later) to support volumes > 16TB on the RN104.

 

The NAS will need to wipe the disks. If they are unformatted it should wipe it and start syncing right away. Wait for the resync to complete before replacing the next disk.

Message 2 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

As I hoped, thanks for the confirmation.

Message 3 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

I am currently on 6.4.1 would you recomend I upgrade to 6.6 first?

Message 4 of 16
StephenB
Guru

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit


@broad01 wrote:

I am currently on 6.4.1 would you recomend I upgrade to 6.6 first?


I would, though there are incompatibility issues with third-party apps that you should research before you do that.  

Message 5 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

No apps installed, so I should be good to go.

Thanks

Message 6 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Did the upgrade now I can not connect to the NAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

disk lights and activity lights are all on solid.

 

display will not light up when i press power.

 

does not respond to ping

 

What do I do now.................................  any suggestions before I unplug it?

Message 7 of 16
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

You could try rebooting it, yes.

Did you update to 6.6.1? That is the latest firmware, not 6.6.0.

Message 8 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Yes 6.6.1

 

Thanks.

 

I am a little trigger shy after loosing all my data on a 6 drive ReadyNAS a couple of years ago.  It locked up during a drive upgrade and after reboot nothing, no volumes.  It is still in my cupboard, I dream of figuring out how to recover it one day.

Message 9 of 16
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

We do sell data recovery services to make a data recovery attempt. If the data on your 6-bay is important to you you may wish to consider pursuing that.

Message 10 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

What is the cost for that?

Message 11 of 16
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

I believe it starts at about $200 for the initial diagnostics but support can confirm the current figure.

Message 12 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Reboot worked, phew...

 

Do I just call into support regarding recovery?

Message 13 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

So I must be the most unluckiest guy with Netgear ReadyNAS.

 

I put the first 8TB drive in and it synced in 3 days.  The next evening I put the second 8TB drive in and after about 2 minutes the system said disk 4 had failed and then the system said the sync had completed.  Nothing would work so I had to power reboot the box.    Then the system said “btrfs_search_for_ward+2ac”.  Tried many things like putting the original disk 2 in, nothing worked.  So I decided to scrap the whole idea and pulled the last two 4Tb drives and filled the box with 8TB drives.  Then I tried to format all the drives with no luck.  It kept saying it was syncing!!  So the only solution I thought would be to Factory Reset.  I did this but still it came back and says syncing.  How can it be syncing with only one drive with data???

 

I assume it is not worth trying to recover from the error.  Therefore how do I tell the box to build a new blank X-RAID with the 4 x 8TB disks?

Message 14 of 16
broad01
Tutor

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

Just for the hell of it I tried another Factory Default tonight.  Every reference to a Factory Reset says it will erase all data.  Why when I do it it come back on saying Resyncing in Progress Remaining time = hundreds of hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Message 15 of 16
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: RN104 Disk Upgrade Limit

There are different theories about disks and failure. Some reckon that disk bought together are more likely to fail around the same time.

When you do a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything), the disks are wiped, and a new RAID array is created. The disks have to be synced sector by sector to setup the RAID. However this initial sync is a special case where if a disk fails the array should remain intact.

Hopefully this experience has shown you the importance of backups.

Message 16 of 16
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