I have a Readynas duo v2 with a single 1tb drive. I want to add a 2nd drive to mirror the 1st. Do I need to match the drives or can any compatible drive be used. Thinking of spin speed, data rate etc.

My understanding of mirroring is that it’s fine to use different spec disks, but that your performance will be the performance of the worst disk.

Hasn’t been a problem for me (now a ReadyNAS user, but also on previous RAID arrays) as there tends to be a year or so between the disks I buy, so it’s the old disk limiting me, not the new one!

Does a 5400rpm disc typically have a worse performance than a 7200 disc then-excuse the numpty questions. I don’t know what disc is fitted at the moment.

Typically, yes. But this may not matter to you. For example, a 5400 will still stream movies and music fine.

You *may* notice a difference if you are transferring either very large files or lots of small files either from or to the disk.

What do you use the NAS for?

Streaming Music (flac files) to a squeezebox Mainly,some files backed up on there too.

Either rotation speed will be fine. A 5400 would of course take longer to mirror the existing drive than would a 7200 (assuming the existing drive is a 7200) but I don’t believe you’ll notice any difference once up and running.

For your usage, I don’t believe disk speed is a necessary concern, I’d be looking at disk reliability as the key factor instead.

Don’t buy the Western Digital Green drives, they don’t perform very well. Go for WD Red drives, work very well in the ReadyNAS.

Milkie, ta very much, those are the 2 I’m looking at. Markie-thanks for the info, just what I needed

Does a 5400rpm disc typically have a worse performance than a 7200 disc

All other things being equal, yes.

However, all other things are rarely equal.