Question 1

What does the function of having dual gigabit ethernet connections? Can you put two connections into your network for faster speed?

Accepted Answer

In a word: 'yes' but with an important caveat -- it will only work if you have a Managed Switch which supports "link aggregation". Read about it on Wikipedia. This ability to aggregate or "mix together" traffic over two (or more) ethernet connections is based on the ethernet-based LACP protocol.

I bought the NETGEAR ProSAFE GS108T, which costs more than an unmanaged switch, but is still affordable at about $70. You use two cable to connect both NAS ports to two ports on the switch, and then you configure the (managed) switch to allow link aggregation on those two ports.

Note that it won't magically allow you to copy files at 240MB/s. (2 x Gigabit) It is designed for multi-user environments, so if you have two users wanting to copy files at the same time, each user will be able to get up to 120MB/s  throughput, (1 Gigabit)  and your NAS will be pushing out 240MB/s for both the users combined.

I would love to be able to use my NAS at faster than gigabit speeds!! But for that, you need something faster than gigabit ethernet. It exists, but not in the consumer space.

I own this nas, but only as a back up device that runs rsync. For my primary NAS, i use Synology DS713+ on my home network. This Nas is great, because it is inexpensive, and has 6 bays, which I populate with various  hard drives leftover from computer upgrades, and it is FAST! Most NAS today are crippled by weak CPU, but this nas has a dual-core Atom, which you need to saturate that Gigabit ethernet port.

Good luck.

Question 2

What is the maximum HD size these support? Can I use the new 10TB drives that are now available? Will they support larger drives when they come out?

Accepted Answer

Here is where to go to check which drives are compatible with the ReadyNAS units.  You just select the readynas device you have, or want to buy, then it will show all of the "supported" drives.  Since the site won't let me post links, just google "ReadyNAS Hard Disk Compatibility List"  It will be the first hit.

Question 3

Item includes 6 X 4TB drives. What make, model, and specifications are they?

Accepted Answer

This is a Diskless Storage system it does not come with any hard drives. You must purchase the drives separately. If you want tech support you must use drives off Netgears venders list. I ordered 4 x Seagate NAS HDD ST3000VN000 3TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive. These are recommended by Netgear. The use of drives not on Netgears venders list will not get you any tech support if you have a problem. This is a really great system as the RAID-X is pretty much automatic. All you have to do is install the drives and follow the prompts, it will install by it's self and you are off and running. It does take a very long time about 8 hours to format and set up the ARAY but after that you are done. I have no regrets about this product. Hope this has helped.

Question 4

What does the "-100NAS" mean?
When I look at Netgear's website, the model is RN31600 but there is no "-100nas"

Accepted Answer

As far as I know, the -100NAS suffix has no real meaning. It might be reserved for a future generation device - for example, after they upgrade to a newer Atom chip, they might use -200NAS. Also bear in mind that Netgear makes a lot of other products apart from NAS, so maybe they use it to differentiate it from other types of products in their line-up.

As you found out, the first part of the model number is what matters, so the RN31600 is the "diskless" and the RN31662D as six 2TB drives pre-installed etc.

The a diskless model will work out the cheapest, if you install some consumer-grade drives in it (which is what I have done) but the one with drives pre-installed will cost more overall, but be far more convenient to get up and running.

I love my Netgear NAS. I use it for running backups every night. It turns itself on automatically, does the backups, and turns itself off. It has done this every night for over a year. And it's fast. It doesn't have the features of a Synology (which I use as my primary NAS with multimedia stuff) but it is excellent bang-for-buck, and the most cost-effective way to get raid storage with 6 drives.

Question 5

Does this device allow setting up hot spares?  I'm researching to find a decent NAS device that will allow the configuration of hot spares, while still setting up a RAID 10 configuration.

Accepted Answer

Hot Spares are something typically used in a fault-tolerant configuration (such as RAID 3, 5, or 6) which could result in a failure of the array should a disk be lost. In the case of RAID 10 (morroring and striping), the data is already being mirrored, which is an identical set of data, which I don't know that you'd gain anything by a hot spare.

As to the device itself, I don't know that it can be configured with hot spares in RAID 10 mode; it /can/ do a shot spare in RAID 5, at least according to the white paper (though my info may be dated, as it was an older version of software/paper).

Question 6

Can you set up two separate RAID-5 drives with the Netgear ReadyNAS 316 with 6 Bays?  I wanted one smaller superfast RAID-5 drive using three SSD drives, and then a second much larger RAID-5 drive using three each 2 or 3TB conventional hard drives

Accepted Answer

Use Hybrid Drives perhaps?

Questions & Answers