My digital life went into the proverbial turd bucket, when I tripped over my 70 pound boxer, and my open, running laptop and I hit the deck, while reading an article.
Of course I lost months of accumulation, that I'll never get back. I had no backup plan. With several PC's in our household, Online cloud services didn't appeal to me, and since I was the proud owner of a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with four 250g Seagates, I felt I could use it as a solution. The problem is that that horse already left the barn.... but that's another story.
I bought Acronis Home Image 2011, and started to use it to back up my PC's. My capacity before the upgrade was 676 gigs, and based on how my backups were progressing, I knew I better start looking at upgrading my drives. I checked the READYNAS website and got their list of the latest 2TB drives that they certified and off I went shopping.
The price per TB has come down. The last time I looked at the price of upgrading to 4 x 1TB, I remember it being around $450, so it was a pleasant surprise to see twice the capacity at a much lower price point. I choose the ST2000DL003's because of solid reviews, and my partiality to Seagate.
Now for some technical observations, for those looking to upgrade their ReadyNAS NV+.
My ReadyNAS NV+ unit originally shipped with four Seagate ST3250620AS 250g units. with is set up X-RAID, so with the redundancy, I had 676GB of usable space. These drives had only ~8,000 hours on them, and they have never given me any issues. So I'm sure I'll find them handy to have around...
With Seagate touting the new ST2000DL003 drives as "Green", I decided to take some before and after power readings. The old drives idled consumed 29 watts, and while the drive were working the NAS consumed 52 watts at the power cord.
ReadyNAS's touted X-Raid technology worked as advertised. I started with drive #1, and here is a typical log report for the four drives:
Tue May 17 12:15:23 EDT 2011 Disk remove event occurred on SATA channel 1.
Tue May 17 12:15:24 EDT 2011 Disk fail event occurred on SATA channel 1. If the failed disk is used in a RAID level 1, 5, or X-RAID volume, please note that volume is now unprotected, and an additional disk failure may render that volume dead.
Tue May 17 12:22:46 EDT 2011 Disk add event occurred on SATA channel 1.
Tue May 17 12:22:56 EDT 2011 Disk initialization started. The estimated time of completion is 17 hour(s) and 39 minute(s), at which time you will be notified via email. You can also check the progress in Frontview in the Volumes -> RAID Settings tab. Please do not shutdown the system while the initialization is in progress.
Tue May 17 17:45:49 EDT 2011 Disk initialization successfully finished.
Tue May 17 17:45:49 EDT 2011 RAID sync started on volume C.
Tue May 17 19:07:21 EDT 2011 RAID sync finished on volume C. The volume is now fully redundant.
Then after 2 - 3 days of rolling the four drives in, the wrap up looked like this:
Thu May 19 07:52:09 EDT 2011 The first stage of the in-place volume expansion is done. Please reboot the device to complete the volume expansion.
Thu May 19 07:53:27 EDT 2011 System is up.
Thu May 19 08:10:07 EDT 2011 Please close this browser session and use RAIDar to reconnect to the device. System rebooting...
Thu May 19 08:10:08 EDT 2011 Rebooting device...
Thu May 19 15:04:23 EDT 2011 Data volume has been successfully expanded to 5490 GB.
The watt meter settled down to around 45 watts while the drives were active,and around 25 watts at idle.
If you crave more room in you NAS, these drives at their great price point definitely fill the bill. The drives strike a good balance of lower power consumption, less noise and heat, and a fat buffer. Hope this helps!
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | (272) | (6229) | (285) | (102526) | (102526) |
| Price | $92.00 | $69.99 | $95.00 | $49.99 | $67.99 |
| Sold By | ShopKluez | Amazon.com | Socal Data Systems | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Cache Memory Installed Size | 64.00 MB | 128.0 | 64 | 256.00 | 256 |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 2.0 TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 5900.0 rpm | 5400 rpm | 5400 rpm | 7200 rpm | 5400 rpm |
| Hard Disk Size | 2 TB | 4 TB | 2 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB |
| Hard Disk Form Factor | 3.50 inches | 3.50 inches | 3.50 inches | 3.50 inches | 3.50 inches |
| Hardware Interface | USB, eSATA, SATA 6.0 Gb/s | SATA 6.0 Gb/s | USB, eSATA, SATA 6.0 Gb/s | SATA 6.0 Gb/s | SATA 6.0 Gb/s |
| Item Dimensions | 13 x 6 x 4 inches | 5.79 x 4 x 1.03 inches | 5.75 x 4 x 1.03 inches | 3.98 x 0.79 x 5.75 inches | 5.79 x 4 x 0.79 inches |
| Item Weight | 1.70 lbs | 0.93 lbs | 1.37 lbs | 0.99 lbs | 1.21 lbs |
| Size | 2 TB | 4TB | 2 TB | 2TB | 4TB |
When I opened my box the two hard drives had just been put in a large box with a few air pillows (see customer photos). That is not the correct way to ship hard drives and not how the company I normally get my hard drives from ships their hard drives. I am returning them, since it is not worth the risk of possible damage. Based on reading other customer's reviews and looking at the customer photos this is a common and on going problem. Amazon needs to train people how to correctly ship these types of items. So much for Amazon Certified Frustration-Free Packaging specifically engineered to protect fragile items during shipping.
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Top reviews from other countries
Tom
Good value for money. Excellent online support. Disc Wizard software makes cloning old drive a great experience.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 10, 2011Crazyivan
Would recommend. For a NAS you don't need the highest ...
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 26, 2014
