Feedback on ReadyNAS Duo v2

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on the software side, so online documentation is the better way to go as printed documentation would quickly get out of date.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/docs

AllWin 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!