Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

It's a little more expensive than other brands I've seen, but I'm very happy with it and didn't mind spending a little more to get exactly what I wanted.

It works great with my Linux and Windows computers at home (and also works with Mac, although I don't have one to test with). For Windows you map a drive through Windows Explorer, for Linux you run "mount" using NFS.

I was able to share and use the same files/directories on both operating systems without any problems. The fact it works so well with Linux was a big reason I bought this over other brands I looked at. However, note that according to its documentation, its print server only supports Windows and Mac clients. For me that's less of an issue since I primarily use my Linux for development and can print everything on Windows.

It came ready to go out of the box, the disks were already set up for X-RAID, their proprietary RAID technology that's basically RAID-5 but manages volume expansion so you can add/replace disks more easily. It also offers RAID 0, 1 and 5, although since it has 4 disk drive bays and drives are so cheap now, I'd recommend only using RAID 5 or X-RAID. It's hot swappable so you can replace disks without shutting it down. If a single drive fails, you can replace it without losing any data (except RAID 0).

If you want to use RAID 0/1/5 instead of the default X-RAID, change it before you move files to the system (or back them up first), since according to their documentation changing it will erase all of the data.

It supports gigabit ethernet speeds, but my PCs don't yet, so the transfer rate copying files to the ReadyNAS was about 3-4 MB/sec, and about 9-10 MB/sec copying from it. According to CNET's editor review, they were able to write a 5 GB test file to it in 18 minutes, and read the file back from it in 13 minutes (the 13 min read time was the fastest of any of the NAS servers they tested).

The RAIDar software it comes with found it on the network right away. Among other things, RAIDar shows you the current RAID status, disk usage, fan speed, and the temperatures of the unit and each drive.

The web interface provides alot of control over it. One feature I really like is that you can configure it to send alerts to multiple email addresses (and text messages to your cell phone) for various conditions such as drive failures, excess temperatures, disk quotas exceeded, power failures (if UPS connected), etc. Another feature I like is an option to let the drives sleep after a configurable period of inactivity.

With the latest firmware, I was also able to use SSH to connect directly to its filesystem. Obviously you want to be careful if you do this to avoid changing/deleting system files. That would not be good.

Only a few issues so far:
- I can't access the ReadyNAS while connected to my office's VPN, but that's a security "feature" of the VPN software to secure the company's network and also to prevent IP address collisions. Just thought I should mention it in case other people have the same problem. The VPN software is configurable to disable this, but turning it off leads to other problems since my home network subnet is also used at work (they tell us to use a specific subnet at home to avoid collisions but my router doesn't allow changing the subnet).
- The web interface uses javascript alert pop ups for every confirmation, which gets a little tiring. But I can live with it, considering how much control the web interface gives you over the ReadyNAS. Hopefully they'll change this in a future firmware update.
- Its built-in SMTP to send the email alerts didn't work for me; I had to provide my own email account's SMTP settings to get it to work. Their user guide indicated that some network issues require this, although I'm not sure why mine did.
- As mentioned above, the print server doesn't support Linux.

I haven't used all of its features yet, but so far I really like it and am glad I went with this one.

UPDATE 10/29/08: The latest firmware updated the web interface. It doesn't work with Firefox 3.0, but I have the IETab Firefox extension so I set it up to use Internet Explorer.

I bought an NV+ 1GB with no drives and populated it with my own seagate 500GB 7200.10 drives, which saved me about $150 over the price of buying a 2TB unit.

Results so far are very good. Installing the drives and getting the NAS up and synchronized was easy and went just like the instructions said. I started at 9pm and by morning the unit was initialized and ready to receive files. Using the X-Raid setting the device shows 1.3TB available for storage.

I set it up to share media, documents, and software/drivers within our home network, a combination of wired and wireless-G. Other than the hours it took to move 500GB of videos/music/photos from the desktop via 100-Base T to the NV+, performance in accessing files with the wired desktop and 2 wireless laptops is very good. Home movies stream to wireless laptops without loss of frames or hesitation in playback.

The iTunes server is a nice feature and works very well with all our PCs. Another good feature is the SMTP server to email warnings and info to my cellphone-it sent me a message the first night after it completed initialization and synchronization. However, I hope I never get another message from it because it will probably mean bad news.

I successfully backed up 2 laptops and 1 desktop to the backup share, but I'm still trying to figure out how to back up the NV+ itself so I can store backups off-site.

So far a great unit. Small, attractive case, easy to set up and use.

After some really bad experiences with other Network Attached Storage, I finally spent the money and got this one. It is expensive but it really does the job. I use it to back up all my documents including my photostock and I really need something I can trust. This one has real RAID, so if/when it loses a harddrive, you can re-build it. Well engineered, excellent software, and a real manual. One minor complaint, the fan may be a little too loud to use in your media room.

I am not happy with this NAS. While it's a good product, it's something most of us need powered all the time. When I smelled something burning from it a year into owning it, I called customer service. They said they had a "bad batch" apparently and issued a new power supply. Or so I thought - it's been a month with no NAS and they still have not sent the part, which I have to install and replace myself by the way.

They didn't seem too concerned that a product they currently sell it melting for there customers. A NAS likely holds some of the most important data you have - can you trust something they ends of melting/burning itself??

NETGEAR needs to clean up it's RMA process, help customers and respond to simple requests.

It seems to do all it is supposed to do though a little slow as far as I am concerned. Yet after less than a year the power supply unit failed and after checking on line this is a common problem. There is no quick fix or replacement. This makes me very nervous about the stability of this product.

The ReadyNAS product was very easy to setup, add additional drives, reconfigure, etc. This is much easier than trying to setup Maxtor shared storage. I would recommend this product even though it is a little more expensive but the ease of use is worth it. This is a perfect home RAID/NAS device to protect your digital photos, music, movies, and important data.

The ReadyNAS NV+ is not cheap when compared with other storage options, but you may not be comparing apples to apples. The number of built-in features on the NV+ is quite impressive, and the ease of setup and use is fantastic. First, the NV+ is a real NAS, equipped with gigabit ethernet, so if you plan to share your storage device among multiple computers, keep that in mind. Some other storage devices have only a USB connection to hook to a single computer, or may include only the somewhat slower 100 megabit ethernet connection. Many modern computers come with gigabit ethernet by default these days, and it makes multi-gigabyte backups much faster. I personally am backing up two Mac laptops via Time Machine, and one Windows desktop through NT backup (when I remember).

Second, the NV+ includes support for multiple network protocols. It has SMB, AFS and NFS support, for seamless integration with Windows, Mac, and Unix systems out of the box. It also contains FTP and HTTP support so you can access your files remotely, and the rsync command, so you can easily schedule backups of Unix systems. In addition, although I haven't personally used any of them yet, it can act as a streaming server for iTunes media or other media servers.

Third, the expandable X-RAID setup is amazing. I bought my NV+ pre-loaded with 2x500Gb drives, which gave me plenty of usable space to start with. I recently found myself with an extra 500Gb SATA drive that I didn't actually need, so I decided to add it to the RAID. I simply flipped open the front cover, slid out the drive tray, attached the drive to the tray, and then slid it back in. The NV+ started rebuilding the RAID as soon as I slid the drive all the way in, and when it was finished, notified me that the new storage would be available after a restart. I restarted the NAS, and it now contains 916Gb of usable space. Incredible! This gives me great confidence in the expandability of the device for future use.

Finally, there are many other great touches to the NV+. It will interoperate with UPS devices connected via USB, and can automatically power down in case of an extended power outage. You can attach and share a printer or USB storage device to the included USB ports. There's a one-touch backup button on the front of the device that you can press to backup selected shares to an attached USB storage device. The NAS is quiet enough to keep in a home office, and so small that it will easily fit anywhere. It's dwarfed by my small desktop machines, and too quiet to be heard over their fan noise.

Overall I would recommend the ReadyNAS NV+ to anyone who needs a networked storage solution for multiple computers. It's easy to use, has a great feature set, and is expandable for the future.

I have owned mine for 10 months now, am back here to buy another. Will actually buy a 3rd soon to gift to my parents.

Why do I love this thing? I used to use USB external hard drives to back-up data, but about 50% of the time after a few years those would die on me, and I have a lot of computers in my house and needed a lot of those to do not as much as one of these does. This thing holds 4 hard drives and runs on fully redundant raid (meaning if and when a hard drive fails, you just pop in another one and you have no loss of data). I put it out of sight and mind and just connect it to the network and now have one machine that every computer in the house can connect to and store/retrieve data.

Put a link to it on your desktop and basically every computer now has a HUGE extra hard drive. I used 4 500 GB drives which after 1/3 is allocated for the raid redundancy gives us 1.3 Terabytes of storage, that's 1300 GB. We share music, photos, files all effortlessly no matter what computer we use without having to put it on a USB drive or memory stick and move it around, and we know our data is safe from loss from a hard drive failing.

I recommend buying the one that comes with no hard drives, then installing the drives yourself. You can insure that you get the best drives and save a little bit of money. Installing drives yourself is extremely easy for a non-techie, just pull out a tray (there are 4 that hold drives), place it in, secure it with the provided screws, and push the try back in. Done.

One problem these used to have according to it's user forums was a heat issue which they resolved with a firmware update, I made sure to shop for hard drives in which user comments said ran very cool to the touch and sure enough the ReadyNas runs very cool with them in it. If it helps I bought the SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives, from a diff website (shhh - new egg dot com, I only say this because looks like Amazon still does not carry them), which now go for $109 a piece there and I am buying 5 more for the next one, 4 for the NV+ and 1 to store as a back-up for both machines.

The reason I am going with 2 machines is because some of my data is mission critical for work, so I am going to have one machine back up the other, and also configure it as a media server and these are able to serve as media devices for streaming HD movies and such to a TV and I think my Tivo, but I have yet to try this so can't say how well this feature works yet.

Can't go wrong with this. Is pricier than 2 disk or 1 disk systems, but if you love your data and like reliability this is well worth it. 5-stars!

This device is very functional, great pricing, robust, full of features and add-ons. Maybe not the fastest NAS on the block, but for home use, holding huge amounts of data, and streaming media back to us, was always great. Reasonable web-based interface as well. Right up until NetGear took over and brought out the latest firmware upgrade. Never had a problem before, but this upgrade, which should not touch your data volume, messes with the volume format without warning, irreversibly, and large numbers of people have had problems with their units afterward. Mine won't boot with the new firmware, and if I go back to the old version I can no longer access my data. Essentially turned my NAS into an expensive brick, and tech support is unhelpful as they have no real resolution.

Save yourself some headaches and Do Not Buy. Was a great company, oh well.

I purchased a brand new NAS (ReadyNAS NV+) that had a faulty hard drive straight out of the box. Hey - these things happen and that's ok, but Netgear support has been well below par.

Lots of misinformation, passing the buck and finally they send me a replacement hard drive which is the wrong model (inferior drive for a RAID array where all others are the same) AND it is a refurb'ed drive.

More than 20 phone calls and have to be more than five hours on hold, I still do not have a working NAS three months after I purchased it. The product and the five year warranty might both be good, but if anything goes wrong, it would be cheaper to throw it away and buy from another vendor. They do not take responsibility for resolution and they don't get back to you when they say they will.

I reckon it would take one huge bribe for me to ever buy another netgear product!!!