ReadyNas Duo RND2000 any good?

[FatalSaviour]

As these are currently about £140 with a free 500GB HDD, I've just ordered one, with the intention of putting 2x 1TB drives in it, and using it to store most of my pictures & music.

Just having a think about it though, I'm not convinced about the integrity of the data storage.
If the RAID controller breaks in a few years down the line, or a firmware flash goes badly wrong, how would I go about recovering the information from the hard disk(s)?
As far as I can see, the RAID used on the ReadyNAS is proprietary, so where my current solution is to use RAID1 internally in my PC, which I could simply use somewhere else, this would not be the case with this device?

Can anyone suggest a better solution (I'm aware that something like FreeNAS would also do the job, and I have a server I could use for it, although I had thought that it's a little excessive (& power hungry!) for that?

Cheers all!

[dirtyoodus]

Hi FatalSaviour,

As no one has replied... did you have any problems with the readynas rnd2000 in the end? sending mine back as I hooked mine up with 2 x 1tb Samsung F3's and data transfer was painfully slow. I enabled fast USB transfer etc but still too slow.

[tusker]

I too would like to know what you think of the ReadyNas Duo RND2000. I can't make my mind up between it and the new Stora. It seems I have a choice between a mature product with most of the glitches ironed out, that needs a fairly good understanding of networking protocols to set up and use, and a bang-up-to-date product with many issues still to sort out, but much more modern and user friendly (one day perhaps!)

[dirtyoodus]

I too would like to know what you think of the ReadyNas Duo RND2000. I can't make my mind up between it and the new Stora. It seems I have a choice between a mature product with most of the glitches ironed out, that needs a fairly good understanding of networking protocols to set up and use, and a bang-up-to-date product with many issues still to sort out, but much more modern and user friendly (one day perhaps!)

Hi Tusker, are you running a gigabit LAN?

[tusker]

Hi,

No - a simple home network off an 8-port hub. My knowledge of the matters such as DHCP and subnet masks is pretty limited!

Thanks

tusker

[12GaugeShotty]

I've heard the Netgear ReadyNAS are extremely slow. It might be better off just getting a USB 2.0 HDD enclosure (30MB/s avg transfer rate).

[tusker]

Thanks. I already have a Seagate Freeagent to meet basic backup requirements. I was looking into the world of NAS because we purchased a camcorder at Christmas that records to SD cards and hence the sensible thing appears to be to download the files to a RAID 1 setup, thus giving better data assurance, and saves clogging up the PC's hard drive and the Freeagent. I also hope, one day, to be able to stream audio and video files to the hifi and TV.

[jackvdbuk]

I've heard the Netgear ReadyNAS are extremely slow. It might be better off just getting a USB 2.0 HDD enclosure (30MB/s avg transfer rate).

it transmits at 10/100 speeds.. how can it go any faster? unless you have gigabit of course then it could be slower than other NAS's

im assuming if you do use their Raid-x tech, you would need ot buy another enclosure to recover the data or perhaps use the warranty

[12GaugeShotty]

it transmits at 10/100 speeds.. how can it go any faster? unless you have gigabit of course then it could be slower than other NAS's

im assuming if you do use their Raid-x tech, you would need ot buy another enclosure to recover the data or perhaps use the warranty

I'm referring to their gigabit transfer rates. 10/100 will always be slow but even on gigabit it has pathetic write speeds.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/n...viewed?start=6

[FatalSaviour]

Hi FatalSaviour,

As no one has replied... did you have any problems with the readynas rnd2000 in the end? sending mine back as I hooked mine up with 2 x 1tb Samsung F3's and data transfer was painfully slow. I enabled fast USB transfer etc but still too slow.

Hi dirtyoodus, sorry I haven't replied until now- I've been in Scotland without the internet for the past week.
In the end, I'm afraid I cancelled the order on mine, as I just wasn't convinced about its proprietary raid. I've ended up just creating a RAID 1 array in one of my PCs instead, which isn't ideal, but is faster (and may well be more reliable) than the alternatives.

BR