NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ 4-Bay 0TB (Diskless)

Short Summary:Good piece of hardware but under certain circumstances it is slow. This applies to mounting a share internally, using RemoteNAS to access it over the Internet, or accessing the admin web browser. I followed the ReadyNAS forum advice and upgraded the memory to 1GB but still feel it is a bit slow. That said, once you actually have mapped the drive I found it works satisfactory.The admin website however is atrociously slow no matter what. Setting up user accounts/share/permissions is an exacerbating task due to how much I must wait. You can import user account information from an ascii file which I assume is faster but have not done so. Given there were only a small number of users and shares to set up in a one shot deal it wasn't too bad.Longer Version:I bought this device for a small office environment. I added in 2-2TB ST2000DL003 Seagate Barracuda drives. These were listed in the device compatibility list at Netgear's readynas.com website (a very GOOD resource). The device itself works fine and the fan keeps the drives very very cool (36.0C/96.8F).One gotcha that hit me was how the security worked. On some other NAS's I used once you the share permissions all files in that share were readable/writable by what the share permission dictated. On the ReadyNAS that isn't quite the case. If my account copied up files then by default only I could read and write to those files. This is actually a good thing but during setup it didn't jump out at me that this would be how it worked. The very good news is this can be altered in the Advanced CIFS Permission section of the share. There is also an Advanced Share Permission section that allows you to make file permission changes after the fact. That came in handy when I had file share with 10 GB of files that only I had access to.I have been using the ReadyNAS Vault services (trial) that is built into the NV+. It allows you set the drive to upload certain shares/directories on a scheduled or continuous basis. It works well once setup and uses the ElephantDrive service (which in turn uses Amazon cloud services). I am on the 30 day trial which allows for 5Gb. What I discovered is that once it goes over that threshold it doesn't always backup all changes NOR does it email me to tell me that I have overextended my limit.If the website administration and the initial mounting to the driver were faster I would give it 5 stars. It is a 5-7 year old device so I do cut it some slack. That said I don't regret (so far) the purchase and will very likely purchase another ReadyNAS device

I own two NV+ v1 boxes for the last three years. It's a great (but slow) product with lots of features and functional add-ons. One of my boxes is dedicated for media streaming and usually ON during the 6pm-2am timeframe. The other box is just for backups. Holding all the personal files plus serving as a TimeMachine server for Macs in the house.The biggest problem with the Readynas is that it works great until it breaks. In my personal history of intensive professional and personal IT history I only had very few disk failures and no data loss. But for the last 3 years after operating these boxes, I have 4 serious incidents with over 6 disk failures. Unfortunately in none of the situations Readynas was able to recover from the degraded mode and I either lost data or had to restore from the backups. Most of the time, harddisks do not fail overnight. So they start giving more and more bad sectors or ATA errors. NV+ is able to capture these, but the real problem is that all these scenarios lead to a corrupted filesystem or force the volume to sync. Again in all of my incidents NV+ was stuck during filechecks or volume syncs. There is a standard set of steps to follow after such failures but none of them was able to get back the volume healthy. Please also note that due to the aged product, the newer disks might be not in the hardware compatiblity list.If you're not concerned about the data loss and just a want a standalone fileserver, media streamer, bittorent client, squeezebox server, DLNA Server, TimeMachine server in a single box, that might be your choice, but just be aware.

Before purchasing the Netgear NV+, I had 3 network attached storage devices, so this Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ makes my fourth. I also own the Acer Aspire easyStore H340 for use at home and two Buffalo TeraStation units for use at work. All of these have a four hard drive capacity. I have only had the Netgear unit up and running for a few days, but of the four units I own the Netgear seems to be the best.Before commenting on the units, let me explain something about the setting in which they are used. Both my home and office are multi-platform environments. For example at home I use machines that use Linux and machines that use Windows. My wife and daughter use only Windows. My son uses only Macs. So for us having a network storage that can work well with multiple platforms is a big advantage. You may not have the same needs.You may ask yourself why you want to get a networked storage unit at all. Why not just get a USB external drive? The USB drives are cheaper and generally faster. That they are less expensive you can see for yourself by searching Amazon. The data transfer speeds won't be obvious (and won't always be true). A fast USB 2.0 drive will transfer data at between 20 and 25 MBs (mega bytes per second) on average. Network storage will transfer data at speeds that depend on your network. Most homes and small offices have fast ethernet with a maximum speed of 100 mbs (megabits per second - or about 12.5 megabytes per second) and data transfer that can be achieved is about half the rated speed, so most home routers will give you transfer speeds of 4.5 to 6 MBs with networked storage. If you have invested in a gigabit ethernet router and network cards for home or office you could in principle get 45 to 60 MBs transfer speeds, or about double the USB rate. I don't have this at home, and most people won't, so the network storage will be slower than the USB.There are three main reasons to buy the network storage:1. Data security from RAID. RAID is a technique for storing data in a way that can spread data across several disks and keeps redundant information on several disks, so that if one disk fails, you can swap out the bad disk, replace it with a new disk, and (ideally) not lose any files. This is a BIG advantage over external USB drives, which fail and cause data loss that can be difficult or impossible to recover. This means that it makes almost no sense to buy a network storage unit with ONE disk. Doing that is the same as getting an external USB drive.2. Ease of backup. Most of the network storage units come with software or work well with widely available backup software. The setup in our house allows all of our machines to be backed up to a central storage device. The storage is always on and the backups can be set up to run automatically or on demand, according to individual computer use patterns.3. File sharing. Having a lot of storage on the home network makes it easy for us to share music files (we have ripped our CDs) and other files between computers, although this can be achieved with external USB drives as well.If these advantages seem important to you, let me offer comparisons of the devices I have tried.Buffalo TeraStation: Internally this machine uses a version of Linux, but you don't need to know anything about Linux to use it. It comes with software for direct management of the unit, but once it is up and running it can be easily managed using any computer with a web browser. It supports and interacts well with Windows, Mac and Linux PCs. Seems reliable so far - I have had the two units for over 3 years. File transfer rates between a PC running Linux and the TeraStation connected through the router: about 4.8 MBs.Acer Aspire easyStore: Internally this machine runs Windows home server. You might think this would make it relatively easy to manage from other Windows machines, but I did not find this to be so. While transfer rates are fine (about 5 MBs) the unit can not be managed using a Mac or Linux machine. It MUST be managed from another Windows machine and the interface is slow and cumbersome. Even worse, the quality of the physical unit seems to be low. One of the small doors that closes in one of the drives broke, and the power supply recently failed. This is a REAL hassle. I cannot recommend this unit.Netgear ReadyNAS NV+: Internally this machine also uses a version of Linux, but like the Buffalo TeraStation you don't need to know anything about Linux to use it. I purchased this unit "diskless" and separately purchased four Western Digital 3.5in eSATA drives. It took me about 90 minutes to install the drives in the unit, plug it in and have it up and running. You really do have to read the setup guide (on the included CD) to find out the default username/password to access the setup program. Once you have access, you can manage the Netgear device from any machine that will browse the web. The Netgear has excellent support for all platforms. Apple Bonjour, Windows Samba/CIFS, and Linux NFS are all supported. You can also set up the unit to serve as a web server or file transfer device using FTP. The RAID setup was great - completely automatic and transparent. The setup automatically checked for firmware upgrades, and offered to upgrade. Upgrading the firmware was quick (about 5-10 minutes).The unit is attractive and relatively quiet, and so far I am very pleased. Data transfer rates from PC to the Netgear unit are about 5.1 MBs on my home router.The Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ is highly recommended if you work in an environment with multiple platforms. Works well with Windows, Mac and Linux. While it is more complex to setup than a USB external drive it is easier to setup than other network storage devices I have owned. It seems to be well made.