AMA - Ask Us Anything About ReadyNAS and You Could Win a ReadyNAS 214!

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daspiel wrote:
Why NetGear over any other brand?

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ReadyNAS is generally very reliable and stable and as a central file storage it is excellent. Afterall, your data is what you value most! I'm not saying there are no issues, but I observe excellent stability for this basic function. I find the backup modes also very good, if a little confusing to start with. When expanding capacity, popping in an additional disk and have ReadyNAS x-raid expand automatically was seamless the times I have done it. The fan on the Duo v1 was noisy (so I changed mine), the NV+ v2 is not as bad but not silent. There is no way to turn the fan off for example when the disk are sleeping and the temperature is sufficiently low, which would make the unit totally silent when not in use. The newer RN200 series have larger fans that are quieter I believe, so less of an issue now.

When I have looked elsewhere, let's say QNAP (I have one) and Synology (I don't have one), the community forum here is by far superior in my opinion. Always helpful and I don't recall a time where the pros were sarcastic or flat out abusive (which I have observed on some forums).

Having said that, I do feel the ReadyNAS lacks advanced features compared to the others, especially Netgear provides little (useful) add-ons. There was a time when Netgear wanted to go for fee based add-ons (even for community contributors who did not want to charge), that was a real joke and fairly offensive to consumer level users. The community add-ons are limited, so I suggest you take a look for yourself in the appropriate sections to check if there are any features missing.

From personal experience, the ReadyNas NV+ v2 ReadyDLNA had tagging problem in early versions, I raised the issue here and one of the developers created a patch to resolve it. That was rolled in to the next release. I haven't experienced any other issues, and I've had 4 NAS units over the last 10 or so years. I am a bit disappointed that Netgear end-of-lifed the NV+ just a few months after I purchased it, and in fact it was only on the market a short while. I do understand the reasons and I accept that sometimes you just have to move on. The NV+ has still served me well for about 4 years (purchased Jan'2013) and is still my main NAS, so I can't really complain.

Personally I would highly recommend the ReadyNAS and my own next purchase will likely be a RN214, which I think offers best value for money, performance and features that I need. I've got in to the ReadyNAS ways of doing things and don't want to change, but I'm sure other NAS units are also pretty good. It will mostly come down to preferences on the interface and whether the unit has the features you need.