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  • Wardrop - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Not sure if I want my NAS to look like an 80's boombox.
  • therealnickdanger - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    You want to look at it?
  • Ratman6161 - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    Its going to be hidden in a closet anyway. I don't care what it looks like.
  • Fake-Name - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    There are iSCSI add-ons for the NV+. It shouldn't be too long before they're available for the NV+ v2.

    The "Ultra" series used the same basic codebase as the NV+, and the firrmware is mostly open source, so it shouldn't bee too long before someone pulls dwn the source, and compiles the iSCSI module for the NV+.

    The downside is since it's an add-on, you may have to do some tweaking using SSH (I did to get it working on my NV+).

    On the other hand, it's been pretty impressively stable so far.
  • iwod - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Netgear's ReadyNAS lineup is very well respected in the industry.??? May be company will buy them because of their Name.

    In Consumer NAS market, there are only two options, Qnap and Synology. Others dont even come close on features, price, performance.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    I didn't want to quote from the PR, but, it looks like Gartner did some market research / analysis and determined that Netgear is the leader in the sub-$5K market:

    http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/09/4041443/netgear-r...
  • nasuser - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    I think the reviewer needs to go back and look at his comparisons

    The 2 bay consumer NAS from Synology is the DS211j & the 4-bay unit is the DS411j

    A quick search shows the DS211j available for around $200 ie the same price as the new Duo, and the DS411j costs around $350 - which is $50 cheaper than this described NV+

    So to claim

    "By sacrificing some features such as NFS and iSCSI and cutting back on the DRAM, Netgear has managed to deliver the members at half the price of the competition's offerings." .

    is highly misleading
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    The DS-211+ is the one based on the same hardware (Marvell 6282). We didn't review the DS211j, so can't comment there.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Just confirmed that the 211j is based on the 6281, has 128 MB DRAM and is more of a competitor to the LG NAS solution, rather than this one. I am sure the Duo v2 will have more performance than the 211j.. But, the 211+ could just surpass the Duo v2 based on the presented benchmark results.
  • nasuser - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    There is very, very little difference in performance benchmarks (as far as you can trust vendor supplied numbers)

    Couple that with the fact that many home users do not have PCs that can sustain such transfer speeds

    Note that Synology no longer list the DS211+ on their web site as it appears to be replaced by the (cheaper) DS212... Plus there are many other vendors in the 2 bay market...

    Bottom line - Netgear ain't that cheap which is why I don't completely agree with the thrust of your conclusion, but I appreciate you responding and looking into this

    Maybe a review of the 2 bay NAS market in the near future?
  • ganeshts - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    These are not vendor supplied numbers I am talking about.

    A 6281 based NAS was reviewed here: www.anandtech.com/show/4510/lg-n2a2-nas-review

    Look at the NASPT benchmarks and compare with what we got for the NV+ v2. There is a big difference in the robocopy benchmarks (46 and 21 MBps vs 77 and 35 MBps). For the general consumer, who doesn't care about speeds, the LG unit is a better choice at a lower price.

    The DS212 specs seem to indicate that a 6282 is at the heart and it also has USB 3.0. I am yet to benchmark that unit, but I expect it to come in around what the NV +v2 achieved in the 2 bay configuration.
  • nasuser - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    You can't use an LG benchmark to then make conclusions about a non-LG device! Just having a similar processor doesn't automatically mean the same performance. Maybe the next time you want to buy a car you'll go test a couple of Volkswagen - then you'll know which Audi to buy as they use the same engines

    If you don't have your own benchmarks then you have no choice but to trust those provided by the supplier - in this case Synology - which shows the very little difference between their $200 unit and the Netgear $200 unit

    But your article makes a major conclusion that the Netgear unit is effectively half the price of its' competition for the same performance, neglects all other aspects of comparison, and so states it is the best value for money. And that conclusion is based purely on extrapolating from a test of an LG device?
  • ganeshts - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    I don't trust manufacturer benchmarks because the test cases are not going to be the same across manufacturers. I always draw conclusions from the benchmarks that I have run myself. We have the following:

    1. LG with 6281
    2. DS211+ with 6282
    3. NTGR NV+ v2 2 x 1TB with 6282

    (2) and (3) have similar performance, and (3) is half the price of (2).

    There is a new contender,

    4. DS212 with 6282 and costing 1.5x the Duo v2.

    I am making an educated guess that (4) will have performance similar to (3). I can't imagine how the engine analogy applies to the above description.

    I will approach Synology for a DS212 review unit.
  • Daniel Egger - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    "By sacrificing some features such as NFS and iSCSI and cutting back on the DRAM, Netgear has managed to deliver the members at half the price of the competition's offerings."

    So why is it in your opinion that castrating an already available feature would reduce the cost of such a product? The real reason for that is to lure non-experts into buying a more expensive version ...

    However none of the brands deliver something I would consider to be a killer feature: All of the NASes allow for repartitioning while destroying existing data; what I would like to see instead is some utilisation of LVM to partition space on the fly and maybe even allow snapshotting and snapshotted backups.

    All the smaller NAS products currently on the market are in fact toys without something along these lines.
  • nurgle - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    At the $400-$600 range, Wouldn't it just make a lot more sense to just use a computer? Even at the $199 range it seems you could pick up some old atom pc and use that instead. Not to mention you could run all the applications you would want on it (FTP, SFTP, FTPS, SSH, webserver, dhcp, nfs, cifs/smb, dns, firewall, NNTP, NTP, and on and on. I mean all these NAS things are just a stripped down linux box in the first place. Why not just have a linux box?

    I get the laziness thing. I also get the people are too dumb thing. But it seems like a lot of people who are neither lazy or dumb are compelled by these devices.
  • irev210 - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Size, power consumption, web GUI.

    Obviously this is something you can build yourself, but here are a few things to consider (coming from an avid QNAP fan).

    1) Build quality -
    My qnap is built like a tank. Sanyo OSCON caps, high quality cokes/mosfets, high quality delta PSU, ADDA fan

    2) Power consumption -
    The PSU size is perfect for the size of the NAS, so you get the most efficient A/C to D/C conversion.

    3) noise -
    Obviously it is designed to be quiet

    4) Software -
    Their web-based software is nifty, easy to use, and takes seconds to configure

    There are a TON more reasons, I suggest you take a quick look at some of the neat features at qnap.com

    Nowadays, I am lazy. Convenience and total cost of ownership are much bigger priorities for me.
  • KennethAlmquist - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Having just built a system, I would say:

    1) Build quality: You can buy good quality components and still save money over a pre-built NAS. My build:
    - Intel 620 2.6Ghz dual core Sandy Bridge processor ($69)
    - Intel DB65AL motherboard ($85)
    - 2 x 1 GB memory (had on hand, ~$20 otherwise)
    - FSP AU-400 Aurum Gold 400W Power Supply ($76)
    - NZXT Source 210 case ($40) + front fan ($8)
    That's $100 less than the NV+ v2 without drives, including a brand name motherboard and a high end power supply.

    2) Power consumption: The Aurum Gold has an efficiency of around 86% with a 40 watt load. I assume that the NAS manufactures get better value for their money by going with power supplies with lower wattage ratings. I don't see any reason to believe that they use more efficient power supplies. High efficiency at low power is expensive, so I'd hazard a guess that the NAS manufactures go for 80% efficiency.

    Under load the system I built draws 49 watts, compared to 28 watts for the two drive Netgear unit, but that's with a much faster processor and 8 times a much memory. The NAS may have more energy efficient disks; I didn't get the Western Digital WD20EARS drives I wanted because of events in Thailand. An apples to apples comparison might give Netgear a 10 watt advantage. At that rate you are not going to get $100 worth of electricity savings in a reasonable amount of time.

    3) Noise: The build I did is virtually inaudible. The only NAS I can compare it to is the Iomega StorCetner ix2, which is a lot noisier.

    4) Software: If QNAP doesn't sell their software separately from their hardware, that suggests that they have looked at the market and concluded that their software doesn't provide a compelling advantage over the competition. Presumably the appeal is that they install and mostly configure the software for you, and it works well enough that you don't have to worry about it. And yes, I do understand the appeal of that. But if you have the time and inclination to deal with the hardware and software yourself, you can do better than a pre-built NAS.
  • T2k - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - link

    You are clearly clueless about this market, I must say.

    Build quality with $40 case and $8 fans? ROFLMAO!

    Aside of these stupid claims most NAS boxes are not only about quarter of the size of your fugly build (NZXT, OMFG) but also noiseless, cost actually the same than your ugly build and come with 3-5 years of warranty, all included, no need to keep contacting 5-6 different el cheapo PC parts vendor when they die.

    But your most hilarious point was the last one:
    "If QNAP doesn't sell their software separately from their hardware, that suggests that they have looked at the market and concluded that their software doesn't provide a compelling advantage over the competition."

    :D :D :D
    Did it ever fuckin' occur to you that they chose to keep it proprietary because THAT IS the main differentiator for a NAS box? And that they maintain their own fork, you don't need to shit, only install single updates?

    Boy, you are one hopelessly clueless bloke.
  • C_H_I_P - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Is it me, or is the SKU for version 1 and 2 the same ?
  • C_H_I_P - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    Figured it out for myself.
    V2 == RND4000-200EUS
    V1 == RND4000-100EUS
  • sunbear - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    If it was formatted as ntfs, this could explain the low 20MB/s backup performance. Netgear slumps by using the free ntfs-3g driver whereas qnap licences a ntfs driver from paragon which provides 3-4 times the performance. At this level of performance it would seem that USB 2.0 would have sufficed to handle that low level of performance.
    It might be worth retesting with ext3 format to see.if performance at USB 3.0 levels is achievable or whether the bottleneck is the weak Marvell CPU.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    sunbear, Thanks for the note! Yes, it was a NTFS drive.

    Let me retest with ext3 formatting.
  • ganeshts - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    I retested with ext3, and the results are actually slightly worse than NTFS. But, as you say, NTFS performance could probably get an additional boost with a better driver. We can't say for sure whether that is the case without actually trying out another NTFS driver on the ReadyNAS. I will ask Netgear to analyze this further.
  • sunbear - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    Thanks very much for EXT3 the retest. On a NAS that is designed for the budget consumer who will most likely want to backup their NAS via USB (rather than over Ethernet) it's particularly disappointing to see Netgear provide USB3 with the potential for speedy backups, but leave bottlenecks elsewhere effectively nullifying the whole point of having USB3 in the first place! It might be worth asking Netgear why they added the additional cost to include USB3 but then completely failed to utilize it.

    Regarding the NTFS vs EXT3 performance question - A year or more back it was the case the NTFS backups were slower on Readynas platforms than EXT3 backups, but it seems that the situation may have now reversed due to an update to the ntfs-3g driver to version 2011.1.15 (http://www.tuxera.com/community/release-history) in the most recent versions of the RAIDiator firmware. It now seems that Readynas Ultra 2 users are even finding similar results to your results (http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2902...
  • MTN Ranger - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    No NFS, no sale. I have a Synology DS210j at work and a DS210+ at home and they provide fast transfers and are reliable.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    Since we have SSH access, it is possible that NFS could be enabled by end-users. I will also put in a word with Netgear :)
  • QChronoD - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    I currently have a 6x 1.5TB drives running on an older Adaptec raid card (in RAID5). Unfortunately it's from right before auto-expansion became popular, so to increase my array I'd have to back it all up, add the new drives, make a new array and then copy everything back over.

    My question is whether it would be "better" to look into migrating to a NAS (that supports at least 15TB) or a newer RAID card that does support auto-expansion?? A quick look on Newegg showed that once you get over 4bays for the NAS, the cost jumps to $800-1K, and there isn't much thats larger than 6. However I've seen some 16ch RAID cards that are about the same price, and that would give me much greater future expansion.
    (I'm not concerned with using a NAS to save power, since my computer is running 24/7 and I'm probably going to upgrade to a Ceton card next year.)
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    The Synology DS1511+ fits your expansion criteria, but it is pretty costly at > $800. unRAID solutions will also work (you can bring your own machine or look into the MD-1510 series). But, all of these are costly.

    From what I have heard, it is better to go with NAS solutions compared to RAID cards when it comes to 'set it up and forget it' scenarios.
  • JHBoricua - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    For the $399 asking price of a NV+ v2 diskless unit, I can get a HP Proliant Microserver with a dual core 1.5Ghz low voltage CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 250GB HD, Broadcom gigabit adapter and 2 expansion slots. An additional $99 gets you 8GB of RAM from Crucial. Fill it with 2TB Samsung F4 drives for another $300, slap Solaris 11 with napp.it as the front end and you'll have a much more capable device than the ReadyNAS that can do CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, FCoE, Rsync, WebDav, and much more.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    The issue will be power consumption + customer support. For tech-savvy users, I do suggest going the self-build route, but many SMBs / SOHOs don't have time to build or maintain a NAS themselves.
  • JHBoricua - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    I'm pretty sure the difference in the power supply draw of the Ready NAS and the HP Microserver is not that much when fully loaded. And somehow, I doubt the support from Netgear is anything to talk about, having dealt with them before.
  • LeftSide - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    My HP Proliant Microserver with a dual core 1.3Ghz with 8Gb ECC DDR3 ram running Solais 11 express idles at 15 watts. I've added 2 hitachi 3 tb drives, and have not measured power yet, but 15 watts is pretty good.
  • nasuser - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    "but many SMBs / SOHOs don't have time to build or maintain a NAS themselves."

    And more to the point many don't WANT to or have the expertise.

    Whatever the criticisms of various consumer NAS, unbox -> plug in -> turn on and you're ready to go in a few minutes.

    No OS to install, or hooking up to a display etc. And if/when they fail - getting back to a factory default status is as easy as a reset button press.

    If all you need is basic network storage, I think devices like these can save alot of time & effort and at a reasonable price point.
  • alanh - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link

    I have a mixed environment at home and am looking for something like this that I can use to do automated backups of Macs via Time Machine and PCs via [whatever other method]. Does this work for the former on Lion and does it include software for the latter?
  • beginner99 - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    I've been considering such a device too lately but for now I just keep the stuff in my desktop. Those consumer NAS have the advantage, that they are very small. A DIY build will easily be double the size unless you go for an expensive special case (Chenboro...) and then it won't be any cheaper. You will also be very restricted with the motherboard (mini-itx with enough sata ports).
  • dj christian - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    IDY?
  • JHBoricua - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link

    " A DIY build will easily be double the size unless you go for an expensive special case"

    Not necessarily. As I pointed out earlier, for the same price of the diskless NV+, you can get a HP Proliant Microserver with 8 times more RAM than the default NV+ config, a better CPU and without hardly a difference in power draw. And you don't have to sacrifice on the size either.

    Here's a size comparison.

    ReadyNAS NV+ dimensions: 7.9 H x 5.2 W x 8.7 D in

    HP Proliant Microserver dimensions: 10.5 H x 8.3 W x 10.2 D in

    You get 6 SATA connections (5 internal, 1 eSATA), one internal USB port mounted on the motherboard (that could boot your Os), 1 half height PCIe x16 and 1 half height PCIe x1 open slots for future expansion and can be expanded with up to 8GB of RAM (8 times the NV+ maximum).

    It's a much better deal for the DIY'er and offers better flexibility.
  • Evadman - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link

    An HP Microserver is 2.5 times bigger than an NV (you even posted the dimensions) 360 cubic inches vs 890 cubic inches. Comparision picture: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1634...

    The ReadyNas is much more of a plug and play system than the HP is. Plug it in, throw drives in it, and it works. The HP is an actual server, so you need to do an order of magnitude more configuration and setup, not to mention continual maintenance. The ReadyNas handles all that in the software to a much higher degree than the HP. If you are looking for pure performance and configuration options, the HP may be a better solution. If you want easy, the Readynas may be a better solution. Both have their own niche, so it depends on the skills the user has and how much effort they want to expend.

    Full disclosure/experience/whatever: I have three NV+'s along with a server with a 50TB RAID 60 array running Server 2008R2 on an Adaptec 52445 along with other NAS type devices from other companies.
  • jleach1 - Saturday, November 12, 2011 - link

    Someone explain how a MSRP of $399 is cheaper than the current NV+?

    I see em going for between 250-350?

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