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: Getting out while the getting is good.
Summary: 1 Stars
My bro recommended this and overall it's a great concept, I like Netgear hardware typically, but I am already on strike 2 with this sucker and I have no intentions of risking strike 3 and losing some of my most important files. My first shot with Netgear Ready NAS was plugging it into the wall right out of the box, finding it was defective. The power supply wouldn't stay connected. Yes, I had it seated as far in as it could go. I sent it back and ordered NAS 2. Take it out of the box and it's not as sensitive to touch as the other one but AGAIN touch the power plug the wrong way and poof - lights out. #1 LINUX hates being shut down ungracefully and #2 I have lost all faith that this is my answer to fears of losing data, which is what it is meant to be used for. Heaven forbid I am moving files across the network when I sneeze and I'm completely hosed.
That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't slower than a turtle with a pile of bricks on its back, but this thing is so slow, I can't use my audio software to stream my MP3s off the mapped drive. The songs play jerky and when my software adds music to it's collection it crawwwwls as the counter ticks up each song it discovers. On my local drive it goes about 0-550 songs in 5 seconds. Through the mapped network drive..... it took hours. I had to leave it to go to bed at 2am because I couldn't wait any longer. It is the current firmware 4.1.5. I'm done. sending it back before I'm really sorry. My brother had better luck with his, but why tempt fate.
Digital camera Review: Good NAS (with a big issue)
Summary: 4 Stars
The Readynas Duo's second disk can only be used in mirror mode. The second disk cannot be used to increase total capacity of the NAS i.e, JBOD mode is not supported. This means that you can only have 500GB of space (unless you replace the existing 500GB disk with a bigger one)
Other than this issue, the NAS drive seems to perform well. Big file (> 10MB) transfers gave a consistent 12MB/sec on my 100Mbps LAN. I also upgraded the Slimserver 6.5 to Squeezecenter 7 without any issues. SSH access is available too
May 08 update:
Upgraded my LAN to gigabit. Read speed is ~39MB/sec and write speed is ~28MB/sec. Impressive! Vista settings I had to make to get this speed
1. Install Vista SP1
2. Disable Vista network throttling by setting value to FFFFFFFF ([...])
3. Set PC Ethernet controller's "Jumbo Packet" size to 9014 bytes (Default was 1514 bytes on my controller) and enable Jumbo frames in ReadyNAS FrontView
Digital camera Review: Good Product / TERRIBLE Tech Support
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been overall pleased with the performance and features of my ReadyNAS Duo, especially after Netgear added a feature to the operating system to directly support Time Machine backups. However, I have been consistently and wildly disappointed with the support offered for the product.
Every time I've contacted tech support, whether by phone or email, I'm convinced that the people on the other end have no idea what they're talking about. It seems they just look things up in the online forums and then regurgitate that information to me. I'm not sure what the point is of even having tech support... it's certainly not helpful. The last time I contacted tech support I got two links to completely irrelevant forum posts and ended up just solving the issue myself, and I've pretty much resolved never to contact them again.
When I first set up the machine and was trying to get remote access to it, it took literally weeks of phone calls and combing through the forums to figure out how to do it...and now it still doesn't really work remotely most of the time! I've pretty much just ignored that because it does what I primarily bought it to do: work with Time Machine to backup my computer, and hold photos/music...but it's pretty annoying that I don't have remote access just because I don't happen to have another couple of spare weeks to figure out the problem.
Bottom line: Good product....TERRIBLE tech support! I consider myself pretty computer saavy, but I'd say if you're not a computer genius, don't count on being able to take advantage of all of the advanced features of the product.
Digital camera Review: Good server but not great
Summary: 4 Stars
Very nice server but the setup is kinda tricky at first it took me a couple of hours to figure out the HTTPS and sharing feature. When I did figure out everything went smoothly. A beginner will hard time to set this thing up need to call support to guide. The noise is very low and acceptable and to access the server is very fast.Digital camera Review: Great NAS
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this a little more than a month ago. I am able to do almost averything that is advertised. I have no problem sreaming media to both Xbox 360's. I still haven't figured out how to get my printer working on it, but since it is a Dell, I don't think it is the NAS. I did have the orginal Seagate hard drive fail. When I found out which drive it was, I swapped the original Seagate with the Western Digital (500GB Each) thinking the mirror would pick up. Needless to say, I shouldn't have switched them because when I did that, the NAS re-formatted the mirror to the default settings and I lost 300GB of data. Customer support was helpful in getting the hard drive replaced, but I think it should be explained in the manual that you shouldn't swap the positions if a drive fails. The only reason I did the swap was because I couldn't see the nas via frontview, but once I isolated the bad drive and inserted the mirror in bay 1, the NAS was recognized and then proceeded to re-format the drive thinking both drives were dead. Ignorance on my part, but I think it should be explained very clearly in the manual about what to do and not do do in case of a drive failure to avoid loss of data.
All in all this is a great device and I would recommend this to anyone.