Upgrading NAS Drives

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Bit of an off topic question, but I have a 4 bay ReadyNas NV+ V2, fitted with 4 3tb WD Red Sata drives. It basically works OK but isn't very quick over network when I'm copying to it (on my gigabit connection from the PC to the Readynas, It maxes out around 24mb/sec). The product itself is considered end of life by Netgear and no more support from them, and things like ReadyNas Remote (to remote access my NAS) doesn't work under Windows 10 (which my PC's run).

Add to that it's the main storage and backup drive for all my movies (around 5TB of them) and Photos (around 1TB), and allows me to stream all my movies over a CAT6 cable from the NAS drive (in the Study) to my Multimedia player and TV in the lounge. I am looking for a new quicker, slicker NAS drive (4 bay so I can re-use my drives), so am looking for suggestions please.

Secondly, I guess the only way to get my data off the current drives and across into a new NAS drive is to physically copy all the data (movies, photos etc.) from the current NAS to external HDD(s) then back across once the drvies have been put into the new NAS and re-formatted to it's own generic protocol ?
 
synology and qnap will blow the readynas out of the water. at least my old DS1010+ blew my NV+ away, customer service wise too after my Netgear CS nightmare.

you're right on your second point, you'd have to re-transfer any data to any new device. the disks will not be swapable. but presumably you could just restore your backup. although reading this:

it's the main storage and backup
rings alarm bells on that front.
 
thanks Neil.

On the alarm bell's front :D, yes, it's my main storage drive, however, all my Photos are backed up on a second drive (so that's no problem) as are all my music files.

When it comes to my movies, they are all rips of my DVDs and BlueRay's I have in the loft (hundreds of them), so yes, whilst I'd ideally not want to have to rip everything again, I do have all the discs still so it wouldn't actually be the end of the world (just a right royal pain the ass).
 
Synology, QNAP or Asustor if you want something ready made but be prepared to pay around £400 for something with a decent processor.
An HP Gen8 Microserver (plus some extra RAM) and some time to load your OS of choice will give you a much more powerful device for considerably less money. I've now got two, one running Windows Home Server 2011 and the other running NAS4Free. The second one with 16GB ECC RAM cost me £258 and I'll get £55 of that back as cashback (now reduced to £35).
 
Microserver and an old copy of WHS2011?
 
Works for me and it only needs 4GB extra RAM. I only went for 16GB in the second one as I'm running 4 x 3TB drives in RAIDZ1 so need 1GB RAM per TB of disk space. I suspect the problem will be finding the copy of WHS2011 at a sensible price.
 
Synology, QNAP or Asustor if you want something ready made but be prepared to pay around £400 for something with a decent processor.
An HP Gen8 Microserver (plus some extra RAM) and some time to load your OS of choice will give you a much more powerful device for considerably less money. I've now got two, one running Windows Home Server 2011 and the other running NAS4Free. The second one with 16GB ECC RAM cost me £258 and I'll get £55 of that back as cashback (now reduced to £35).
Is the as os included with the ho micoservers or do you have to buy a copy separately? Trying to decide which route to go down either server or nas setup.
 
The HP Microserver is a true server so doesn't come with an operating system.
 
Microserver for sure with 16gb of ram but also budget for a better raid controller if you really want speed from the disks.
The on board one is ok but items like the HP Smart Array P410 which i have installed are much better.
It has onboard cache via a daughter board which includes a battery backup for drive writes in the event of a power out.
It also accepts the microserver drive cage plug straight up. You will need a low profile bracket for it though.
 
I must admit that I've got my Microserver switched off since I moved my office. Now Synology can also do docker images and the likes I haven't come across anything that I can't throw at it for my needs. And Synology runs cooler, users less electricity etc. Mine is a bit older now, but I bought it right; DS713+. Still plenty power to throw anything at it, and I get the full network throughput; i.e. gigabit saturates and is the bottleneck not the device.

Each to their own, but I like the Synology over my microserver.
 
Does anyone know if the ReadyNAS relies on mdadm underneath for providing RAID?
The Synology does ... that could make a disk transplant possible ??

You could always run Xpenology (http://xpenology.org/xpenology-explained/) or FreeNAS on the HP and use it like a normal NAS.

I must admit, having a NAS was good, I'd not invest in another one. Running my own server and configuring it from scratch is much more flexible and actually much more effecient than the NAS it replaced. Not for the faint of heart. The learning curve was useful in my line of work and getting things set-up right took several late nights.

If you want to sell the Microserver, dejongj ....
 
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I would buy new disks for the new setup and sell the old ones, the difference in price is a good investement for the future.
 
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