Hi,
Thanks for this really great project.
Just got a 5big N. vs2 recently: with disks removed. Apparently, you guys are also the only support still available for cases like this... Which is just plain sad. I hope you will be able to keep on going.
After digging through some of the available sources here, I'm almost certain to sign up for your great SW instead of just restoring the old firmware (also possible only with your guides here: big thanks for that), though there are some parts I'll first ask for clarification.
- Do I see it correctly that RAID6 is still not available? Any plans for adding this at some point? Kind of a sore point for me.
Raid6 is not supported. The performance is too degraded (poorish CPU) and it does not provide a better significant level of security : if one disk fails then it is very likely that another one will fail as well (same life usage)
- The FW can be installed only for the disk in the first slot? Not exactly clear if there is any chance to install it on e-sata or USB? Maybe with an uBoot upgrade?
No the system disk must be always the left disk
- If it's not possible, can I just exclude the first slot from everyday usage? And: would such system survive the replacement of the disk in the first slot with a cloned one (of the same type/size, SSD)?
I find it weird (and a bit silly) that a RAID pile would survive the crash of any disk except the one in the first slot... That's also the reason why I've asked about the chance of e-sata or USB boot, since that would allow me the usage of all of the five slots.
Your data will be always available even if the system disk fails : just replace it and use fvdw-sl console to initialize it. After you may include it in the raid volume to restore the redundancy
- Can this system handle USB devices connected through an USB hub? The box has just two USB ports.
Yes, fw may support usb hub
- Is UPS support available/planned?
This functionality is not present on your NAS
- Will I be able to extend an RAID5 pile to higher capacity with a series of replace-rebuild operations, till the lowest capacity disk phases out?
Yes you can do it. But I assume you know it is a long way as you have to restore redundancy at each step (replace one by one disks with restoring redundancy at each step and at the end grow the raid size to the new capacity); All the steps may be done from the fw web-interface
Thanks in advance :)