ReadyNAS 2100 -Upgrade, Replace or Do Nothing?

[Martin McCaffery]

I've got a 2T NetGear ReadyNAS 2100 attached to a Solaria One. Both from 2014. Single screen.The NAS is running fine, according to all of its self evaluations. Haven't had any problems with it. Nonetheless, it is probably way past its use by date. There was discussion a year or two ago about replacing the HD's before they go out, but NetGear didn't have any to recommend that were still being made. As we've been closed a couple of months, and look to be closed a few months more, this seems like a good time to deal with this piece of equipment.
Assuming I'll replace the projector in a few years, is it better to:
Replace the whole RAID now? If so, with what do you suggest?
Replace the drives? What are the safest drives to put in there?
Just leave it alone and hope for the best?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Not real familiar with that NAS, but what drives are in it now and are you happy with the storage capacity. If the latter is yes then replace them with the same or newer equivalent drives. It may let you replace one at a time and rebuild it so you don't lose any content.

[Carsten Kurz]

You should probably make yourself familiar with the menu/operating system of the NAS so you can deal with status and configuration if necessary. E.g. check if there is a drive status monitor that is able to indicate possible issues with the drives. Read the manual and check how you can swap drives, extend capacity. I don't know anything about your programming, but, being a single screen ourselves, even the 3.5TB net capacity of our Sony is often not enough to keep enough of the needed stuff on the server, so we bought external storage extension.

When you 2TB, does that mean 2TB usable capacity? In a RAID, that probably means a RAID5 of 3*1TB drives (or 4*500G)? It should be easy and relatively cheap to extend (double) it to 3*2TB or 4*2TB.
You could even keep the old drive set until everything works again, so you can always revert to the working state.

Whatever, I don't think you need to replace these drives just because they are from 2014. Your usage profile is probably low enough for them to live longer than in actual 24/7 server operations. Our Sony uses 7 drives in it's RAID, it was installed early 2013, and we lost one drive around 2015, no more since then.

Just make sure you know what to do IF a drive fails.

- Carsten

[Marcel Birgelen]

In general, I replace hard drives about every 3 to 5 years, but it depends a bit on the use pattern. Since disks use brushless motors, the mere spinning of the disk is usually not really a problem. What kills disks is temperature swings, shutdowns and spin-ups and just simple usage, as in reading and writing to the disk. Disks that just spin around and are mostly idle can get very old, especially if they're operated in an environment with more or less constant temperature and if you keep them powered. I've often seen older disks refusing to spin-up after a power-outage.

There is one thing to note though: Data stored on disks that's rarely used, whether on powered or un-powered disks, can actually degenerate. Over time, the magnetization of the surface seems to degrade and as such, read errors can occur of data that hasn't been accessed in a long time, this phenomenon is generally known as "bit rot" (CDs and DVDs, especially the recordable type, also suffer from bit-rot). Advanced file systems like ZFS actually prevent bit-rot by "scrubbing" the disk platters once every time.

Now, if you only use it for storage for that single projector and you can easily rebuild the content on there by re-ingesting it, then I'd say the risk profile is pretty low. If you happen to store stuff on there that you want to keep: make sure you have copies. So, if you only use it for that one projector, the smart statistics of your disks are good and errors aren't increasing and the storage size is still good, I'd say, given the interesting times we're in: Don't spend the money on stuff that's still good. But like Carsten put it: Make sure you have a plan if the thing fails. Luckily, a simple NAS with comparable storage of what you have now isn't the end-of-the-world, but make sure you buy one that works with the quirky NFS implementation on the Solaria One.

[Marco Giustini]

I don't think a NAS has a "used by" date.

The Western Digital WD RED WD30EFRX is on the compatibility list and it is still manufactured and available. But to be honest I feel that as long as you get NAS drives you'll be fine with any disk size. You may want to steer clear from some Western Digital RED drives which have been recently under the spotlight for being 'secretly' manufactured using SMR technology which is not great for NAS drives. The WD30EFRX is not one of those.

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Please also note you may be the latest 4.2.16 firmware to work with more recent drives

https://kb.netgear.com/20641/ReadyNA...atibility-List