Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay 500 GB (1 x 500 GB) Network Attached Storage RND2150

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 11.4 inches ; 8.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0013G04AQ
• Item model number: RND2150-100NAS
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank

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  Electronics > Computers & Accessories > Memory Cards & External Storage > Network Attached Storage

• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 19, 2005

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

We recently reviewed the NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+, a network attached storage device, or NAS, that's built for small offices and work groups. We were so impressed with its performance that we decided to test NETGEAR's home-user model, the ReadyNAS Duo, to see if it measures up to its bigger sibling's performance.

What We Think Overall Rating: Pros: Compact design, energy efficient, easy-to-use, built-in RAID capability for secure storage, media streaming capability for wide variety of devices, excellent online forums for add-ons and support Cons: Insufficient user manuals, add-on software does not always have complete feature set At a Glance Capacity: 500 GB (1x500GB) Dimensions: 5.6 x 4 x 8.7 inches (HxWxD) Warranty: 3 years

The ReadyNAS Duo can serve as a digital media server for your home. View larger.

We're happy to report that the ReadyNAS Duo rivals the NV+, but at a fraction of the price. Built for the home-user and home office, this compact, powerful, and surprisingly quiet and energy-efficient device has just about everything you need to keep your digital media easily accessible and protected.

Unfortunately we don't have the space to describe everything we admire about this outstanding NAS device. What we can describe are several features that stood out, including its compact design and easy set-up, quiet and energy-efficient performance, web-, print-server and advanced media streaming features, and its outstanding data protection capabilities. (Our review of the ReadyNAS NV+ covered the system's RAID array functionality, as well several other features that the Duo shares.)

In short, this is an advanced NAS device that anyone who is serious about digital media should consider for their home network.

Easy Set-Up and Compact Design
In addition to this 500 GB version, the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo comes with 750 GB, and 1 TB capacities. The models share identical features, with the difference being the amount of storage in each. The version we tested, the RND2150, included a single 500 GB SATA drive in a hot-swappable carrier with room for a second drive alongside it. (Each of the models ships with a single hard disk drive and can be easily upgraded for data redundancy by installing a second compatible disk drive of equal or higher capacity. The new disk drive will automatically mirror the first drive.)

While the initial set-up with the system's extremely intuitive interface took less than 20 minutes, getting the information for the more advanced-user procedures took a bit more time. NETGEAR does not ship the Duo with extensive user guides. Instead, users are directed to ReadyNAS's online community forum (www.readynas.com) for advanced set-up procedures and add-ons. While navigating the forum for information can be time consuming, the site is constantly updated by NETGEAR developers and community members. We found information easy to locate and well presented.

Like the NV+, users do not need an technical background to configure the Duo. However, a knowledge of network basics, and an ability to search for and install basic files is a must. And anyone with even a modicum of networking experience will find the Duo a breeze to work with.

The Duo is smaller than a breadbox and is constructed with a sturdy metal chassis and door. It includes a Gigabit Ethernet port and two USB 2.0 ports on the back, and an extra USB port at the front along with a "backup" button.

With two drive bays, you can easily upgrade the Duo for data redundancy. View larger.

The Duo is designed to work with virtually any USB storage device and USB printer. We began by plugging a flash drive, external hard drive and a printer directly into the Duo. In each case, the devices appeared as shared drives on our network computers, and the printer connected to the device without a hitch, giving the networked computers instant printing abilities.

Overall Set-Up and Design Grade: A-
We would prefer to have more documentation included with the hardware, but the online forum is an excellent source of information.

Quiet and Energy-Efficient Performance
A huge plus for us is the ReadyNAS Duo's quiet performance. A fan sits at the back of the device, softly humming. Although we disagree with the NETGEAR marketing materials and wouldn't sleep with the Duo, we wouldn't hesitate to set it alongside a home theater system, or in another common area. Compared to many other NAS devices, the ReadyNAS Duo is as quiet and unobtrusive as they come.

In an idle state, our single-disk Duo consumes only 27 Watts of power (or about 35 Watts with two drives installed), and a bit more than that with disk activity. In disk spin-down mode, power consumption goes down to a mere 12 Watts. This is a huge savings when compared to the 100 Watts or more from most computers with comparable storage and RAID abilities.

The Duo also lets you schedule partial or complete shut downs for additional efficiencies. So if you plan to use the device as your primary digital media server or for scheduled back ups of your data, these energy savings will quickly add up.

Overall Power Performance and Noise-Level Grade: A
What a relief to keep our carbon print (and electricity bills) low--quietly and unobtrusively.

Web Server and Advanced Media Streaming Features
Our primary reason for wanting the Duo was to serve our digital media from a single source and reduce the work load of our personal computers. With the Duo, you can kiss goodbye the need to keep your computers running when you want to stream media files. The Duo can connect via your network to such devices as the NETGEAR EVA8000, Sonos Digital Music System, Logitech Squeezebox, Apple iTunes clients, Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360. In fact, it will work with just about any DLNA-compliant device.

Once we loaded our entire music collection onto the server and launched the Duo's built-in iTunes server, our music was immediately available through iTunes on our personal computers. But what really made us smile was that our digital music became instantly available through our Logitech Squeezbox player, bypassing our computers entirely. This means that we now have 24/7 wireless access to our entire digital music collection without having to turn on our computers. On the down side, because the Duo's SlimServer add-on does not offer the software's most recent updates, functionality is slightly compromised, but the advantages of instant, uninterrupted access to our music library far outweighs those inconveniences.

The ReadyNAS Duo can serve files to all your computers and compatible media players in your home.

We were also able to access our personal video files seamlessly through our networked computers. While we found performance to be virtually indistinguishable from playing the files directly on our hard drives, if we were streaming HD video over our wireless network we would have needed to use Wireless-N to ensure steady performance. (If you're looking to do this NETGEAR recommends a purpose-built product called the 5GHz Wireless-N Bridge Kit, or one of their 200MB Powerline Network Adapters.) We also found that editing large raw video files was best accomplished directly off our local hard drive and uploading the edited files to the Duo, but this was more a function of our network connections than it was with the Duo's performance.

NETGEAR's FrontView web-based control panel makes configuration and administration simple. View larger.

Another nice touch is the Duo's Web server capability. With about 20 minutes of configuration time, you can serve your own personal Web Site or blog. Set-up was much easier and quicker than uploading to a remote hosting site. Obviously, if you have visions of launching the next hot social network site, neither the Duo (or your Internet connection) will be able to handle the traffic. But for your own Web site or personal blog, it will stand up nicely.

Overall Web Server and Media Streaming Grade: B+
Once ReadyNAS is able to update firmware concurrently with the media device updates, you'll never need a computer to serve your media files again.

Advanced Data Protection
What truly allows the Duo to live up to its "advanced NAS" moniker is it wealth of data protection features, especially its X-RAID technology, "Continuous Data Protection or CDP," and its scheduled back up abilities.

Just add a second 500 GB disk drive into the empty bay, and the ReadyNAS Duo will automatically build a mirror of the first drive by copying every byte from the first drive to the second one. In case of any hard drive failure, the data is protected. We had a SATA 500GB drive on hand, so we tried this. It was as easy as securing the drive with four screws onto the carrier and plugging the drive in. The data mirroring is taken care of automatically on the fly by the unique X-RAID.

ReadyNAS Duo also includes a feature we're enthralled with called "Shadow" that not only backs up folders and files every time you save them on your computer, but also gives you the ability to save and revert to previous versions of the files. If your local file is lost or corrupted, you simply right click on the back-up file on the Duo to restore it to its original location. Every user on our network accessed this feature without a glitch. As featured on the Duo, CDP is a powerful way to keep your files protected.

And to keep the files on the Duo protected, we scheduled back-ups to a connected external USB drive. The Duo flawlessly performed a full back up the first time, and incremental back ups thereafter. And a convenient "back-up button" located on the front of the device lets you back up your entire system, or parts of it, with a single click. With the X-RAID and the backup features provided by the Duo, you'll never have an excuse to lose a byte of data again.

Overall Data Protection Grade: A
With the Duo, we will have to work hard to ever lose data again.

Conclusions
The ReadyNAS Duo is a powerful, attractive, and flexible NAS device that is great for a home network. It offers much of the functionality of a dedicated server, but since set up is mostly plug-and-play, it does not require a dedicated IT personnel to manage. As noted, the manual does not give all the answers. Fortunately, the strong online community and Web forums offer excellent support and services. And finally, the ReadyNAS Duo is backed by an industry-leading 5-year warranty, so you can rest assured that you'll be protected should anything go wrong.

What's in the Box
ReadyNAS Duo with 500 GB hard disk drive, two hard disk trays, quick installation guide, warranty card, power adapter, power cable, Ethernet cable, ReadyNAS Installation CD and Discovery Utility, and NTI Shadow for ReadyNAS for Windows and Macintosh.

Product Description

Netgear Readynas Duo 1X 500Gb

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

168 of 175 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RAID works, survives hard disk failure, May 17, 2008

By	Tek Know Wiz (California, USA) - See all my reviews

What is Amazon Vine and why do these reviewers write so much stuff without saying anything? This review is for people who want to know only one thing: Does this device actually survive a disk failure? The answer is Yes.

My sister recently lost 2 of her external USB hard drives. She had to pay $3000 to a data recovery company to retrieve her data. I figure that $400 for a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo is small change, if it actually did what it claimed to do, which is survive a disk crash. The only way to know was to test it out.

I have about 40 GB worth of MP3 files stored on my Linux server, accessible to my Windows laptop using Samba as a network shared folder.

From my Windows laptop, I started copying the MP3 files into the \media share folder on the Duo. Over gigabit ethernet, I estimated a transfer speed of about 15-20 MB/second. More than I expected, considering the weak processing power of the embedded Linux computer on the Duo, and because there are 2 concurrent network copies going on, from Linux to Windows, then from Windows to Netgear. Gigabit ethernet is awesome.

While the copy was in progress, I inserted a second 750 GB hard disk (a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series if you are curious; my Duo came with one 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 installed) into the second slot. The Netgear recognized it and started to incorporate it into the RAID system in 2 steps: first, format the drive (an ext3 Linux filesystem I think), took about 2.5 hours; second, synchronize the data from the first disk to the second disk, took another 2.5 hours. During this time, the 40 GB MP3 file transfer continued without a hitch.

Next, I configured the Duo to enable NFS (Network File System) and mounted the /media folder onto my Linux box. Now I had access to both the original and the copy on the Duo. I ran a "diff -r" command to do a recursive binary diff between the two directories. Came out perfect, no file corruptions.

I went back to my Windows laptop, and started another 40 GB copy of my MP3 files to the Duo. While the write was in progress, I _removed_ the 500 GB disk. The Duo detected a disk failure within a few seconds, and sent off a notification email to my GMail account, warning me of a disk failure. You can configure the notification email address to send the message to, say, your SMS on your mobile phone. As before, the MP3 copy to the Duo continued without a burp.

I then inserted a second 750 GB drive into the first slot, while the copying was still in progress. The Duo formatted and synchronized the new disk, and after about 5-6 hours, I once again had a fully redundant RAID system. Did another 'diff -r' just to make sure the data was not corrupted. None found.

When upgrading from a single 500 GB to dual 750 GB disks, the proprietary Netgear X-RAID filesystem makes the process as painless as possible. After both disks are formatted and synchronized, all you need to do is click on a button in the admin web interface (don't remmeber the exact wording, something like "Expand Volume") to take advantage of the bigger disks.

In conclusion, I tested the Netgear Duo through a simulated hard disk crash and hot-swapping disk upgrade, and found that it performed perfectly, did not corrupt the files which were being written to it during the process. The Duo performs reasonably well (15-20 MB/sec write speed over gigabit ethernet) and costs only about $400, far cheaper than what you'd pay to recover your data after your disk crashes. It has an impressive list of other useful features (USB backup, USB printer, NFS, Rsync, FTP, Bittorrent, etc) that you can read about in other reviews. The most important question for me was, will it survive a disk crash? I won't know for sure until a disk really does crash, but based on my testing, I think the answer is Yes.

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An UltraSPARC server, October 13, 2008

By	Stefan Brunner (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great product and Amazon Price !, July 4, 2008

By	Roman C. Schaefer "Romasurus !!!" (SouthEast Milwaukee, WI. - CUDAHY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I purchased this Netgear ReadyNAS DUO RND-2150 to replace a D-Link NAS DNS-323. I wanted the ability to increase my drive size without having to restore the current files from an off NAS backup. (Not available with the D-Link product. I had read several reviews and I was impressed with what I had learned from the reviews.
My oreder from Amazon arrived within 2 days and I was up and running with the Originally Purchased hardware. The RND-2150 comes with 1 500 Gig HD. After I had set it up and got it working, I was up and running in 15 minutes, I copied the files over from the D-Link NAS and then checked to make sure everything was as it was supposed to be, I took down the D-Link NAS. My next step 3 days later, was to install a 750 Gig HD and see what happened. This is where the wonder started. The RND-2150 is hot swappable. So I installed the newer larger drive in the removable drive tray and plugged it into the device. The RND-2150 took care of the who thing automatically. Mirroring the new drive did take about 5 hours BUT the unit was still accessible while the mirroring was going on. A week later, I wanted to replace the 500 Gig with an identical 750 Gig. With the system running, I removed the 500 Gig, secured the new 750 Gig into the tray and plugged it in. Once again the RND-2150 was off and running automatically. Progress is monitored by a Windows Netgear Interface "RAIDAR" that comes along with the package and buy e-mail notifications sent out buy the RND-2150 as things progress.
Everything turned out just perfect after I did a reboot of the NAS after the mirroring was completed. The RND-2150 expanded the mirror to utilize the full size of the mirrored 750 Gig drives.
Now the 500 Gig drive is off to ebay and I am extremely happy.
I am using StorageCrafts ShadowProtect to do weekly backups of the 2 main home computers and I am using the included NTI Shadow for ReadyNAS to do realtime backups of both systems My Documents. Along with storage for the Music and Family Photos, this is a great product