How easy to set up a Netgear Readynas Duo?
Discussion
I'm thinking of getting one of these Readynas from here here claim the free 1T hdd and set it up in RAID 1 mirroring. I have a few pc's in the house running XP/Vista or W7 all wirelessly connected through a Netgear DG834GT router.
Anybody had any experience setting one of these up?
Is it plug and play or do you need to be a techy to do it?
An alternative is one of these Netgear stora. These are on the shelf in PC World reserve and collect for £149.00 here buy an additional 1T hdd and do a similar job.
However, the stora although more simplistic to set up, does appear to have a few issues according to the Netgear support forum.
Anybody had any experience setting one of these up?
Help/advice much appreciated before I spend my hard earned.
Thank you
Mick
Anybody had any experience setting one of these up?
Is it plug and play or do you need to be a techy to do it?
An alternative is one of these Netgear stora. These are on the shelf in PC World reserve and collect for £149.00 here buy an additional 1T hdd and do a similar job.
However, the stora although more simplistic to set up, does appear to have a few issues according to the Netgear support forum.
Anybody had any experience setting one of these up?
Help/advice much appreciated before I spend my hard earned.
Thank you
Mick
As stated in another thread I found it a bit of a pain to setup:-
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
The documentation kept going on about the windows program RAIDar. Downloaded the latest version installed it on Windows 7, which didn't find the NAS box on my network. Then plugged the box directly to my PC via a cross over cable still nothing, then reading on forums I needed a lower version of RAIDar, which worked. However almost all the functionality is in the web application from the IP of the unit - nice.
Trying to setup the Raid with 2 Samsung discs, it read one disc as having 0GB and the other as 750GB but nothing free. Tried hard re-boots, soft re-boots, re-reading the disc, everything. Nothing on the forums about this issue, until I had the idea to swap the discs around which worked - why would that make a difference, but it did!
Maybe I got all these issues because I used my own discs instead of purchasing the item with disc included?
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
The documentation kept going on about the windows program RAIDar. Downloaded the latest version installed it on Windows 7, which didn't find the NAS box on my network. Then plugged the box directly to my PC via a cross over cable still nothing, then reading on forums I needed a lower version of RAIDar, which worked. However almost all the functionality is in the web application from the IP of the unit - nice.
Trying to setup the Raid with 2 Samsung discs, it read one disc as having 0GB and the other as 750GB but nothing free. Tried hard re-boots, soft re-boots, re-reading the disc, everything. Nothing on the forums about this issue, until I had the idea to swap the discs around which worked - why would that make a difference, but it did!
Maybe I got all these issues because I used my own discs instead of purchasing the item with disc included?
the DUO runs the standard readynas, fully featured software, but that means you need to know all the terminology used in NAS/network world
the stora is supposed to be a lot more simple
both get good reviews, Ive used a readynas since before they were owned by Netgear and were just called Infrant readynas.
support forums are like car forums, everyone goes there with problems to solve - read the Ferrari forums and youd never buy one of these either, with all the bugs they have LOL
...the fact that another million people on the planet have one thats working just fine doesnt get on the forums...just the few that go looking for solutions ..thats how it is with anything these days
the internet is a good tool for research before buying, but its hard to get a perspective without sales volumes being known....
this was posted 2 days ago :
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/networking/displa...
...a fair review of the DUO, which is still holding its own and is a 2 year old stable platform, and the biggest selling NAS on the planet under £2K
the stora is supposed to be a lot more simple
both get good reviews, Ive used a readynas since before they were owned by Netgear and were just called Infrant readynas.
support forums are like car forums, everyone goes there with problems to solve - read the Ferrari forums and youd never buy one of these either, with all the bugs they have LOL
...the fact that another million people on the planet have one thats working just fine doesnt get on the forums...just the few that go looking for solutions ..thats how it is with anything these days
the internet is a good tool for research before buying, but its hard to get a perspective without sales volumes being known....
this was posted 2 days ago :
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/networking/displa...
...a fair review of the DUO, which is still holding its own and is a 2 year old stable platform, and the biggest selling NAS on the planet under £2K
It's a full-on embedded Linux machine with expandable RAM and a RAID controller. It is a very well built piece of kit - very high quality.
However I found mine simply too loud (the cooling fan was constantly berserk) and it didn't do what it said on the tin (act as a Time Machine target for my Mac network) so I've stopped using mine.
For Windows and Linux, it should be flawless. And the loud fan noise in mine was probably a duff fan - whilst there are plenty of people complaining of noise from the ReadyNAS Duo, there are a lot more people who *aren't* complaining (as bogie alludes to).
If you're a bit of a Linux hacker then you'll love it, since the system is pretty open and there are plenty of software modifications / add-on packs for various purposes available, some supported by Netgear themselves, some not. Easy enough to get a root shell on and run what you like too
It's actually a very good product and at a very good price. Just didn't quite do the job with my Macs when I tried it (the system software may have been upgraded to actually work properly with Time Machine by now). You haven't mentioned Macs so you'll be fine.
Just remember that all of these decent NAS boxes are actually full embedded PCs in their own right - running Linux (usually) - and knowing that is quite handy if you need to troubleshoot issues. The underlying filesystem on the disks will be some Linux type filesystem - the NAS itself presents itself to the network as a Windows, FTP, NFS, AFP, whatever server - but if you're after Windows domain ACL type permission granularity then you may run into the limitations of what a NAS actually is. Most things can be worked round, but require a bit of system knowledge if you're going well off-piste.
However I found mine simply too loud (the cooling fan was constantly berserk) and it didn't do what it said on the tin (act as a Time Machine target for my Mac network) so I've stopped using mine.
For Windows and Linux, it should be flawless. And the loud fan noise in mine was probably a duff fan - whilst there are plenty of people complaining of noise from the ReadyNAS Duo, there are a lot more people who *aren't* complaining (as bogie alludes to).
If you're a bit of a Linux hacker then you'll love it, since the system is pretty open and there are plenty of software modifications / add-on packs for various purposes available, some supported by Netgear themselves, some not. Easy enough to get a root shell on and run what you like too
It's actually a very good product and at a very good price. Just didn't quite do the job with my Macs when I tried it (the system software may have been upgraded to actually work properly with Time Machine by now). You haven't mentioned Macs so you'll be fine.
Just remember that all of these decent NAS boxes are actually full embedded PCs in their own right - running Linux (usually) - and knowing that is quite handy if you need to troubleshoot issues. The underlying filesystem on the disks will be some Linux type filesystem - the NAS itself presents itself to the network as a Windows, FTP, NFS, AFP, whatever server - but if you're after Windows domain ACL type permission granularity then you may run into the limitations of what a NAS actually is. Most things can be worked round, but require a bit of system knowledge if you're going well off-piste.
Interesting comments about the noise. Mine sits on a desk next to my left shoulder. I've never found the noise intrusive and I run Genie Timeline which is constantly backing files up to it.
I'm a bit of a networking numpty, but I found it really easy to set up. Press the button to backlight the front panel display, get the IP address displayed, bung it in a browser window and enter the default password - then off you go.
I'm a bit of a networking numpty, but I found it really easy to set up. Press the button to backlight the front panel display, get the IP address displayed, bung it in a browser window and enter the default password - then off you go.
I like the 3rd party add-ons ...theres a couple of guys on the forums that will port just about anything to them 
Ive got the cut down "pioneer" (home user) model of the 6 bay PRO, its a few hundred quid cheaper as it loses some business functions like iSCSI and LACP on the dual gig ports ....5 mins later on the forums and you can download those features for free as 3rd party add-ons
Ive got the cut down "pioneer" (home user) model of the 6 bay PRO, its a few hundred quid cheaper as it loses some business functions like iSCSI and LACP on the dual gig ports ....5 mins later on the forums and you can download those features for free as 3rd party add-ons
I've set this up now and must say it was very easy to do. I'm running XP, 2 vista and a W7 machine and they all work perfectly. The RAIDar software on the disc was the latest version and found the NAS straight away on every machine. I really like the NTI Shadow software, I'm backing up some spreadsheets and other stuff and the minute I make changes and close the file down Shadow automatically makes another copy on the NAS.
Thanks for all your comments.
Thanks for all your comments.
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