NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150 by Netgear
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Digital camera reviews of NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150
Digital camera Review: A good network hub
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
As my home network grew in size and functionality, my need for a hub or central locus device like the Netgear NAS became obvious. With three PCs and several smaller devices like an iPod Touch and a Blackberry all WiFi enabled, and with several WD external storage devices rapidly filling with data, I am now able to connect them all via the NAS. It is easy to retrieve data thru the NAS (you can connect external storage devices via USB). You can also network your printer, stream music using iPod clients, regularly schedule backups and attach a music streaming device obviating the need of your PC. There are creative things that can be done with the included Bit Torrent client, though I haven't as yet had sufficient time to investigate. Set-up was easy enough and the footprint is relatively small. All in all, given the discounted price, this is an extremely worthwhile, multi-functional device whose uses offer good value for the money.Digital camera Review: A great place to puts lots of stuff
Summary: 5 Stars
I was looking to replace an old PC-based server, which was providing storage for my digital photos and documents; it was also supporting a back-up tape unit. The ReadyNAS Duo has performed well in this role and I am saving a lot of electricity by shutting down the PC server.
Installation was relatively straight forward and worked as advertised. The browser-based administration works well (I am using Firefox)and my Windows XP clients can access the storage facilities through Network Places as if the device was a local hard drive. Performance is good. I have not used all of the advanced features, e.g. Share access-control, but they seem easy to understand in the administration interface.
The X-Raid feature, which provides the storage redundancy, worked as advertised. I was able to purchase the unit with a single 500GB hard drive, then add a new 1.0TB hard drive as the redundant unit. The system automatically configured the drive array and duplicated the data without any intervention. It created an array sized for the smaller disk, but I am sure that when I replace the smaller drive with another 1.0TB drive, the system will handle the conversion to a 1.0TB mirrored-array.
The physical unit is well-made and the system supports hot hard drive swapping. Also, the cooling fan is variable speed, so it runs as quietly as possible.
Digital camera Review: A must have to protect and share your family data
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a Network Attached Storage device with 500GB of storage. When you connect it to your network, it will allow you to store up to 500gb of data with any computers on your network.
If you add a second SATA hard-drive, it will use a technology called RAID to keep a real-time backup of the data on the first drive. Installing a new drive is very easy, and you can get one from Amazon.com for about $70.00.
If one of either drives fail the unit will e-mail you, you can simply pop out the bad drive and install a new one. The unit will rebuild a backup on the new drive while still allowing access to your data.
The unit comes with software that will allow you to configure the unit by adding folders and users who each have their own passwords. You can allow anyone to access a particular folder, or limit access to certain users. You can even allow some users read/write access while limiting others to read only. Most configuration options are set via a web-browser and once you are directed to the web-page, you can just bookmark it for future reference.
The unit also supports a number of streaming protocols, which means that you can store video, music, and more on this device and then access that data from other network devices, including the Xbox360, other media players that attach to your TV made by D-Link, Netgear, and Buffalo, and Logitech's Squeezebox products (which are themselves totally neat ways of having a whole house connected music system).
If you set it up right, you can also allow access to the device from the internet. However, I don't recommend this, because of the risk that someone may try to hack your system or launch a denial of service attack. If you want remote access, get a VPN Router (Linksys makes a very nice one).
There are a lot of low end NAS devices around. Many of them are very slow (i.e., Linksys devices) or suffer from firmware limitations that I don't like (see my review of the D-Link DNS-323). Overall, I think that this is the best balance of price, speed, and reliability for the mass market. If you can afford to spent $1,000 on network storage, Linksys makes a 4-drive version that lets you get about 1.3TB of storage, with a single drive acting as a backup called the ReadyNAS NV+, which I also highly recommend.
Digital camera Review: Almost perfect storage.
Summary: 4 Stars
The product has performed almost flawlessly. I did note that when you first put the second drive in for the array that while it is formatting and setting up the new drive that the device will disconnect from the network. After it has completed setting up the second drive, however, it has worked perfectly. We use it for accessing our documents, music, photos, and videos. It also streams media to our PS3. No complaints at all.Digital camera Review: An UltraSPARC server
Summary: 5 Stars
The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo appears to based on the old UltraSPARC architecture, complemented with a SATA controller. It runs Debian for SPARC and Netgear permits root access to the box to install whatever you want. The box is quiet nice. It does Netgear's own proprietary XRAID mirroring (but not RAID 0). XRAID apparently allows the automatic upgrade to more then two drives, if you would use it in a Netgear box, which supports more then two drives. Unlike with other home office NAS, the firmware is saved in a flash and not on the drives itself. The drives are hot swappable and rebuild themselves automatically unlike with many other personal NAS products. The NAS can share directories via CIFS, NFS, AFP, and HTTP. It also can do FTP and TFTP, which comes in handy in the lab. The ReadyNAS comes with a print server, which is useless as it does not support bi-directional communication, required by most printers these days. You can also share USB 2.0 HD or flash drives, which the ReadyNAS will make available as a share. It can be configured via the WebUI or via standard Linux CLI at your own risk.
It comes with some "services" pre installed: iTunes server, Logitech Squeezecenter, and industry standard Home Media Streaming server and UPnP AV server. It features the BitTorrent server and some proprietary photo sharing server. Since it is Linux you can run your own Webserver. Apache is preinstalled and Netgear tells you how can activate it via CLI you. You can also use it as DNS or DHCP server but you need to install it via CLI yourself. I would be careful to activate too many services as those tax CPU of course. It is a server, but by modern standards a small one. Performance is decent though.
I notice some time lack when opening a file but read and writes are just under 9 MB/s, just about under 100Mbps Ethernet. Writes are a bit slower when journaling is turned on. You can also turn off journaling and connect the box to an UPS. It works with the newer home and commercial APC UPS with USB port. You have granular control over rights and quotas in the framework of the EXT Linux file system. You can manage those rights via the WebUI or the good old Unix way via CLI.
The most important application for me is the built-in backup. It does RSYNC, FTP, HTTP, NFS and a CIFS based clientless backup. You only need to share your files on your notebook/desktop/server, and it will diff it every night and you do not have to worry to loose any files in case your HD should crash. I am still backing up to DVD on regular intervals.
Basically it is Linux server, based in the UltraSPAR, a top of the line server technology 10 years ago. It is better then just building a Linux server, because the box is small, cheap, and only uses up 20W opposed to 200W or more of a real server, which makes a difference when it runs 24/7. The box is slightly larger the two 3.5" HDs stacked. The ReadyNAS is very quiet. When it first was formatting the drives the fan ran at full speed and was noisy but then they slowed down to 1500 RPM and you hardly can hear it. The box stays cool. Most people will not use the Linux CLI but rather the intuitive and easy WebUI.
It is cheaper to build your own then by the loaded version. Believe it or not the 500GB version is cheaper then the on without drives. I configured the system with mirrored 1TB drives:
- Netgear ReadyNAS RND-2150
- 2x Seagate ST31000340AS
- Crucial CT12864X335 1GB RAM
- APC Back-UPS ES BE750G
The ReadyNAS is reportedly very picky on hardware combinations and you need to check Netgear's hardware compatibility list.