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: Great NAS device
Summary: 5 Stars
Easy to set up and easy to use. Great for home networks with different operating systems to share and back up files.Digital camera Review: Great NAS for the price
Summary: 4 Stars
Super easy to install, relatively quick no-hassle operation. The only negative is that it doesn't work well with Windows Vista - you have to modify the MTU settings to get performance up to snuff.Digital camera Review: Great NAS, but printer server doesn't work
Summary: 4 Stars
Works great as a network attached storage unit. Easy to set up, surprisingly small, and works fine.
But I have had no luck running an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 printer (which is listed by NetGear as a supported printer) through the built-in USB print server. If you check the ReadNAS forums, you will find lots of other people having the same troubles with various printers. I tried all the various workarounds people have suggested, with no success. I can send commands to the printer (such as head cleaning commands), but can't get an application to print to it. Finally gave up and reattached my Epson 2200 the old way through an Epson print server, which works fine.
Good choice if all you want is backup. Questionable choice if you are expecting to use the print server. I suspect there is nothing wrong with the hardware, but the NetGear software and tech support is lacking on this issue.
Digital camera Review: Great Storage Option for home or small office
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had this drive for about a week now and I love it. Not only am I able to use it as a NAS, but now I can use it with my Tivo too and I don't need to use Tivo Desktop to share and move movies around to other computers to watch them. I simply transfer everything I want to keep off the tivo to a machine with Tivo Desktop, then periodically, i will move them from the computer to the nas. After that every machine in the house can watch the shows without any lag or wait, its great.
There are still other features but my favorite is the ease of setup and that it works, tivo and music streaming, 2bay design for large storage and/or redundancy, built in print server, expandable/backupable to external USB drive.
I would highly recommend this item to everyone. i only wish it could be cheaper or the NV+ (similar to the dup , but with 4 bays) would come down in price.
Digital camera Review: Great device, but falls short of the competition
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Nowadays with devices becoming network capable it makes sense to have network storage. From computers to printers, and other peripherals it is no longer acceptable to have to move your data manually with an external storage device. The modern home network needs cetralized storage. Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a great solution for this. With NAS you are basically connecting an external hard drive to your network and allowing any devices on the network to access it.
Netgear's ReadyNAS Duos are a simple way to add NAS to your network. The Duo is simple to install; just plug the ethernet cable into your network hub, install the software and let the software find the Duo and assign it an IP address. It is simple and painless. The small footprint of this device is also nice. Standing barely 5 1/2" tall the Duo is about the same height as my external HD next to it. I am very pleased with it.
While the Duo was simple to install and easy to use, it is not perfect, and it is not cheap compared to its competition. Comparing it against the competition is the reason I gave this product 3 stars.
One problem with the Duo is that while it has two drive bays allowing you to add a second 500GB HD, you can only setup the drives as a RAID 1 mirroring configuration. In other words, the second HD will be used as a backup and will not add to the overall space of the Duo. Similar NAS drives by competitors like, Buffalo Technologies (e.g. Linkstation Pro 1TB), allow you to configure your NAS in either a RAID 0 or RAID 1 to give you more flexibility.
Second, the Duo can only be connected to your network via an ethernet cable. This may cause issues if your network uses either a smoothwall machine, or you are on dial-up (in which case you may need to connect the Duo to the PC running your dial-up and cause a communications conflict). Most of the competitiors (including the previously mentioned LinkStation) allow USB connection.
Finally, the cost. $400.00 for 500GB of network storage ($ 0.80 / GB) may not seem bad. But compare that to the more flexible and more functional LinkStation that has twice the storage capacity (1TB) and only costs $308.00 ($ 0.30 / GB) and I think you can see why I had to give this device 3 stars.
Without taking into consideration the competition, I would have given the Duo at least 4 stars. However, the fact is that there are NAS devices out there that do more for less money (and made by very reputable companies). I wish this device was more flexible. Maybe the next version will adopt some of these missing features.