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Feedback on ReadyNAS Duo v2
Hi, recently i bought Netgear ReadyNAS Duo V2 device, so i thought i will share my experiences so far. I'll be as short as possible.
The good.
- Excellent performance! I get 41-50 MB/s write and 74-80 MB/s read speed (on large media files). Smaller files (photos) were written at 32-39 MB/s!
- Built quality.
- It's so quite that i could sleep next to it. Really.
- Easy hard drive installation.
- Easy to use and lovely web interface (especially since installing lastest beta FW)
- Price (got it on promotion for 139 euro).
- Latest beta firmware [5.3.5-T33] looks very promising, adds useful features as FTP.
- I don't think i ever mentioned great performance :D
The bad.
- Printed documentation/user manual could be included.
- A bit complicated to set-up:
a) After i powered up device for the first time RAIDar said "STFU" and threw me "Corrupted Root" error message. This forced me to go trough all FAQ section. After re-installing firmware device booted up and...
b) Another complaint from RAIDar: "Bad drives". It took me some time until i decided to delete current EXT3 partitions (previously i had 1 EXT3 partition per drive).
c) When device was finally ready, i couldn't create any shares. In logs i found messages complaining about some not found/inaccessible shares. "Factory Reset" and setting up drives in Raid 1 mode did the trick.
- No EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 support. I hope there was a good reason (performance?) to use some proprietary file system on these devices.
- Only very few add-ons are available at the moment.
Could be better.
- Currently you can set permissions on "main shares" only. I'd definitely like to be able to set permissions for sub-directories is well. Only because of that now i'm forced to map over 10 shares on each PC.
- Currently available UPnP-AV/ReadyDLNA solutions are quite disappointing.
Conclusion.
Despite few troubles i faced during initial setup i really love this device so far and it performs really well and i'll give it 8 out of 10. Really good job Netgear, thank you :worship:
The good.
- Excellent performance! I get 41-50 MB/s write and 74-80 MB/s read speed (on large media files). Smaller files (photos) were written at 32-39 MB/s!
- Built quality.
- It's so quite that i could sleep next to it. Really.
- Easy hard drive installation.
- Easy to use and lovely web interface (especially since installing lastest beta FW)
- Price (got it on promotion for 139 euro).
- Latest beta firmware [5.3.5-T33] looks very promising, adds useful features as FTP.
- I don't think i ever mentioned great performance :D
The bad.
- Printed documentation/user manual could be included.
- A bit complicated to set-up:
a) After i powered up device for the first time RAIDar said "STFU" and threw me "Corrupted Root" error message. This forced me to go trough all FAQ section. After re-installing firmware device booted up and...
b) Another complaint from RAIDar: "Bad drives". It took me some time until i decided to delete current EXT3 partitions (previously i had 1 EXT3 partition per drive).
c) When device was finally ready, i couldn't create any shares. In logs i found messages complaining about some not found/inaccessible shares. "Factory Reset" and setting up drives in Raid 1 mode did the trick.
- No EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 support. I hope there was a good reason (performance?) to use some proprietary file system on these devices.
- Only very few add-ons are available at the moment.
Could be better.
- Currently you can set permissions on "main shares" only. I'd definitely like to be able to set permissions for sub-directories is well. Only because of that now i'm forced to map over 10 shares on each PC.
- Currently available UPnP-AV/ReadyDLNA solutions are quite disappointing.
Conclusion.
Despite few troubles i faced during initial setup i really love this device so far and it performs really well and i'll give it 8 out of 10. Really good job Netgear, thank you :worship:
16 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
AllWin wrote:
- Latest beta firmware [5.3.5-T33] looks very promising, adds useful features as FTP.
A newer beta firmware was released yesterday.AllWin wrote:
- Printed documentation/user manual could be included.
I'm a beta tester so don't know what documentation came with it. I would hope there would have been a basic setup guide. As you can tell from the beta firmware things can change rapidly particularly on the software side, so online documentation is the better way to go as printed documentation would quickly get out of date. The Dashboard (web-admin interface) does link to the Documentation page: http://www.readynas.com/docsAllWin wrote:
- A bit complicated to set-up:
a) After i powered up device for the first time RAIDar said "STFU" and threw me "Corrupted Root" error message. This forced me to go trough all FAQ section. After re-installing firmware device booted up and...
b) Another complaint from RAIDar: "Bad drives". It took me some time until i decided to delete current EXT3 partitions (previously i had 1 EXT3 partition per drive).
c) When device was finally ready, i couldn't create any shares. In logs i found messages complaining about some not found/inaccessible shares. "Factory Reset" and setting up drives in Raid 1 mode did the trick.
The NAS does have to wipe the disks. Sometimes preformatted disks don't play nice, so deleting the partitions on the disks before placing them in the ReadyNAS is best practice.AllWin wrote:
- No EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 support. I hope there was a good reason (performance?) to use some proprietary file system on these devices.
Download the logs (On the Dashboard click Configure, go to System > Info > Logs and click the Download Logs button). The zip file contains several logs and you'll find that you are mistaken. No proprietary filesystem is used.
The ReadyNAS uses Linux software RAID.
/dev/md0 the 4GB OS partition is formatted as EXT3 and the data volume(s) e.g. /dev/c/c/ are formatted with EXT4. /dev/c/c is on /dev/md2. /dev/md1 is the swap.
Data can be recovered using a Linux machine if disks are fine and chassis fails outside of warranty and you don't want to purchase a replacement unit.
What is proprietary is NetGear's scripts for doing expansion etc.AllWin wrote:
- Only very few add-ons are available at the moment.
They are new products. More add-ons will be made available over time. It takes time for developers to develop for the new platform.
Welcome to the forum!- Thank you for reply and for good news. Someone on forums have mentioned proprietary file system used on these units and i never bothered to check it out for myself... Well, i feel like i should raise my rating from 8 to 9 then :) Really good to know that if bad happens i can simply throw it into my desktop and copy all data to other hard drive. Brilliant. Also thanks for heads up on new beta firmware, downloading it right now.
- 5.3.5 final is now available. Recovering data using a PC would be a last resort and you should seek some instructions here if you ever need to do it. Still not a replacement for doing backups of important data primarily stored on the NAS e.g. to a USB disk.
- Now that the Duo/NV+ v2 support rsync in the latest release, a good solution is to work toward a second machine. Once you have experienced the security of nightly quick backups via rsync you won't ever want to go back.
mdgm wrote: 5.3.5 final is now available.
Thank you once again, downloading right now. By the way, i'd like to perform "factory reset" after flashing latest firmware, is there any way to do it without losing all data? I can't find anything regarding that on FAQ section.mdgm wrote: Recovering data using a PC would be a last resort and you should seek some instructions here if you ever need to do it.
It's just in case of device failure (knocking to the wood). Hopefully this won't happen any time soon.mdgm wrote: Still not a replacement for doing backups of important data primarily stored on the NAS e.g. to a USB disk. PapaBear wrote: Remember - the NAS is not a backup plan.
It's very unlikely that both HDD's will fail at same time, what else can happen?AllWin wrote: mdgm wrote: 5.3.5 final is now available.
Thank you once again, downloading right now.
You're welcome.AllWin wrote:
By the way, i'd like to perform "factory reset" after flashing latest firmware, is there any way to do it without losing all data? I can't find anything regarding that on FAQ section.
A factory reset wipes the disks. There's no way around that. An OS/firmware Re-install leaves data intact and fixes some common problems.AllWin wrote: It's very unlikely that both HDD's will fail at same time, what else can happen?
Have a read of Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss. If you delete a file it's deleted off both disks (unless of course you've enabled the Recycle Bin feature on the share and delete the file via CIFS).AllWin wrote: It's very unlikely that both HDD's will fail at same time, what else can happen? - The NAS electronics or software might fail
Lightening or other electrical power spike can fry the disk electronics
Cooling failure might cause both disks to overheat
Theft
Fire or water damage
User Error
The second disk might fail on resync (not as rare as you are imagining).
...- Not to mention:
Tornadoes and/or Hurricanes.
And lest we forget the gas pipeline rupture in California several years back in which people were fortunate to get out with their lives and the clothes on their backs, much less any data storage device. (Not all got out)
This is why we beat the backup drum. One should NEVER trust all their much less their critical/important data to one physical device or even one physical location.
It is so easy to fall into a lull when the device is working flawlessly over a long period of time and this is when Murphy's Law is likely to strike. - Thanks everyone, some of that really makes sense. As a home user, i don't have any THAT important data, but i'll think about getting some ugly looking (should help in case of theft :D ) external hard drive for my photos.
- Yeah. It all comes down to what data you couldn't bear to lose and that data should be backed up.
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