Question 1

all the options with drives use all 4 bays is it possible to buy unit with 2 drives allowing for expansion later

Accepted Answer

Actually it's stupid to buy a unit with 4 drives installed as you will have to replace all the drives to increase the unit's capacity (and it will take ages rebuilding as you replace them one at a time). Buy the unit empty & buy two or three large drives at the same time then you will be able to expand cheaply and fairly quickly. The very largest supported drives are expensive so I'd suggest 8TB drives as the best value for money at present (June 2018).

A single drive (as suggested in one answer) is not sensible - this gives none of the redundancy which is the reason for buying a unit like this rather than a large capacity external disk drive - you can get an external 8TB capacity drive (with no redundancy & needing a USB 3 connection) for half the price of one of these units empty. A RAID configuration with N disks gives you the capacity of (N-1) of the smallest disks in the set, less a small overhead. For example my ReadyNAS 104 with 4 x 4TB disks installed had a useful capacity of 11,984 GB and my new ReadyNAS 214 with 3 x 8TB disks (and an empty slot) has a capacity of 15,987 GB.

For best reliability buy disk drives designed for use in a NAS - they're slightly more expensive than those sold for use in a desktop computer but much longer lasting in a hard working environment.

Question 2

Is this compatable with the readynas 104? i have four drives from a failed readynas 104, and would like to recover and carry on using the drives/data.

Accepted Answer

In my experience, yes.  I bought this to replace a dead 104 and the drives slotted straight in and all the data was preserved.  
Incidentally, I was able to resurrect my 104.  It turned out to be a dry joint that was cured by taking out the circuit boards and putting them on a silicon pad in the oven at 120C for half an hour.

Question 3

Can I use the 2 x 1tb discs from my 102 in this without data loss?

Accepted Answer

We invite you to check the following KB article available online: "ReadyNAS OS 6: Migrating a volume". 
You might also want to check the "ReadyNAS Hard Disk Compatibility List". Before performing any action on your NAS, please ensure that you have an updated external backup of the data. Both NAS should be on the same firmware.

If you have any questions, you can also check out our community NETGEAR

Best regards,
NETGEAR Amazon UK

Question 4

Can i use this with my imac as a media server for my plex account?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the RN21200 should work fine this way with your iMAC.
If you have any questions, you can also check out our community NETGEAR

Best regards,
NETGEAR Amazon UK

ASIN	B015S0Y50C
Brand Name	NETGEAR
Colour	Black
Compatible Devices	Desktop
Customer Reviews	4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (188)
Enclosure Material	Metal
Global Trade Identification Number	00606449111125, 10606449111122
Is Assembly Required	No
Item Weight	5.67 Kilograms
Manufacturer	Netgear
Manufacturer Part Number	RN21400-100NES
Model Number	RN21400-100NES
Mounting Type	Tabletop
Number of Items	1
Size	Diskless
UPC	606449111125 745883703432
Unit Count	4.0 count

NETGEAR ReadyNAS 214 - NAS server - 4 bays - SATA 3Gb/s - RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD - RAM 2 GB - Gigabit Ethernet - iSCSI

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