Netgear RN300 NAS volume question

[Anteaus]

Ok I've got a question for anyone who has experience with recent Netgear NAS systems.

I'm about to purchase a Netgear RN314 NAS and 4 4TB hard drives to put it in. The thing is, I absolutely do not want to use to use either Raid or X-Raid to combine physical volumes. I want to maintain four independent volumes. I already have a separate backup routine in place and this is for home use so I'm not worried about up time. I want the whole 16TB available to me and I don't want to use Raid 0 across the drives. If a drive fails I only want to worry about the data on that drive and not have it affect the rest of the system in any way at all.

Now its quite possible the system will allow me to do this (create four Logical volumes to correspond with the four physical volumes), but the software manual isn't very clear about it. With X-Raid it talks about auto-expanding for new drives and with Flex-Raid you have to choose 0,1,5,6, or 10).

Under the Flex-Raid portion, it shows this in a chart.

Numbers of disks per volume - Raid Level - Can I add disk for protection?

1 - RAID 1 - YES (Additional disk provides redundancy)

2 - RAID 1 - NO (Volume protection is already redundant)

2 or more - RAID 0 - No (RAID 0 does not offer protection)

3 or more - RAID 5 - Yes (Additional disk provides dual redundancy..converts to RAID 6.

4 - RAID 10 - No (Volume protection is already redundant.

4 or more - RAID 6 - No (Volume is already protected with dual redundancy).

Ok, based on what I'm reading is that I can create a single logical RAID 1 volume per physical volume albeit without the redundancy of having the mirror drive. I get the irony of calling it RAID 1 without the mirror, but I'm guessing this is merely a design choice to facilitate individual volumes within the realm of the controller they chose.

So, I basically would have 4 individual 4TB RAID 1 arrays with no redundancy. Does anyone else here concur with my assessment? Again, the documentation is vague on this but at the same time I have a hard time believing functionality this basic would be purposefully forbidden in favor of arbitrary RAID requirements.

Thanks in advance.

 

[lif_andi]

No way to span the drives?

My choice would be RAID 5 if you must use RAID at some level, otherwise, if possible, I'd span the drives to create a single large volume, with one drive failing you'd only lose 1-2 files from other drives (best case and defragmented drives).

Forgive me for continuing since I have no experience with this, but is there no disk management when working with the NAS? Seems to me it would be kinda daft to make something to "sophisticated" and then not allow disk management for you to do as you please with the hardware.

 

[Anteaus]

No way to span the drives?

My choice would be RAID 5 if you must use RAID at some level, otherwise, if possible, I'd span the drives to create a single large volume, with one drive failing you'd only lose 1-2 files from other drives (best case and defragmented drives).

Forgive me for continuing since I have no experience with this, but is there no disk management when working with the NAS? Seems to me it would be kinda daft to make something to "sophisticated" and then not allow disk management for you to do as you please with the hardware.

Actually I'm going the other way. I specifically do not want to span. The system offers a bunch of ways to span, but its not very clear for individual physical volumes. I would prefer four volumes that I can use independently. I'm pretty sure I can do it but I was looking for anyone who would know for certain.