Netgear falling behind?

You might want to blame the floods, manufacturer consolidation and the fact that they seem to bring out a new drive model every six months. It's kind of like the way automobiles used to be. There was a Ford and a Chevy. Now it 5 or six models of each. In the old days there was a single Seagate model for each size and a single WD model for each size, now there are many. Even in the last year they have proliferated. When I bought my first 3TB drives a year ago there were about 8 listed on Newegg, even just a few months ago there were only 12, now there are 46. You can generally find a drive that fits your need on the list, you may just have to hunt for it or go to a different brand. Without knowing your specifics, it is hard to give concrete examples.

If you want the most powerful NAS on the market, the ReadyNAS Pro 6 is generally considered to hold that honor in the desktop market. It uses a dual core Intel E5300 2.6 GHz chip that will more than saturate a 1Gb ethernet connection. However, it does not have the USB 3 connection as that standard was released after the model was developed. The Pro 2, the last of the new Pro series (a 2 bay model) does have a USB 3 port on the front where your Duo has a USB 2 port. (Same is true for the Ultra and Ultra Plus series.

In the few times that I actually copy to a USB drive I tend to use a USB port on my PC (far handier and I can use a file manager to copy the exact files/folders I want). Personally, for backups of a 6 bay NAS with large drives, the USB ports are useless, as are the eSATA ports on some competitors. There is no way you can backup up 12TB of data to anything other than another NAS.

I guess that is my point the industry is moving faster and NetGear does not seem to be keeping pace. Hard drives are coming out faster and there are more models in each capacity. Seems like the investment just isn't there to keep up. From looking around other manufacturers have current up to date HCLs that have drives listed almost as fast as they are released. While you can probably find a drive in a particular capacity for a ReadyNAS you are likely to pay a steep premium to get that particular model. At 6 drives you could end up paying $1-2K more just because of the limited HCL.

For the USB 3.0, two ports with external 3TB drives you can backup 50% of your capacity pretty quickly. There are also lots of uses for moving a large percentage of your capacity to external disk quickly.

Maybe I didn't ask the question as well as I should have. Given my perception that NetGear is falling behind, what edge does NetGear have over the up and coming competitors in the market that I'm not seeing? Mostly I'm finding higher spec'd models with larger HCLs at similar price points. Is there something above an beyond like reliability, software features, etc... that I'm not giving NetGear a fair shake?

There was a thread like this 2 months back. I politely chimed in with similar sentiments. The response was repeatedly, "Netgear founded the quality NAS industry" and doesn't need to change. I disagree and think they need to innovate soon.

I am a proud owner of a Pro 6, but do feel it is being surpassed. Do I need thunderbolt/USB3, probably not. Would I want to buy a currently spec'd machine with a sexy interface. As a prosumer yes.

Most who buy NAS are more advanced with Linux and don't need all the gizmos and sexy interfaces, and can compile apps without needing them preinstalled.

I would however be shocked if the team at Netgear doesn't know this themselves. I would guess NAS is not their priority and are waiting to see what the market wants in a 3rd generation NAS.

New products or major enhancements to products don't just happen overnight. I'm sure NetGear has spent a long time getting the exciting new ReadyDATA product ready for the market, like they always do with their SAN/NAS products. As for a new web admin interface for x86 ReadyNAS this isn't something that would be developed overnight and take some time to make. I'd rather see a new interface when it's ready than see it rushed out prematurely.

The Pro was released late 2008 and the Pro 6 late 2010. As for when they'll release a 3rd gen Pro we'll have to wait and see.

wow, I totally missed the RD5200 announcement. That thing is impressive, obviously overkill for what I or my company are in the market for. My office just installed a QNAP. I encouraged them to get the RNDP line but was rejected.

I am slightly annoyed at hardware manufacturers (NG included) that don't take advantage of USB3.0 and Thunderbolt tech that is generally built into current chipsets. I do understand the comment however, no one is copying from USB, it is more of a stopgap access for a small set of files.

Like I said, I'm sure Netgear knows what the competitors are releasing for new hardware and software updates, I just pray they hit a home run and don't pull an iomega :) I would guess we are looking at refreshes this year or at the latest next.

I don't care so much on the product refresh cycle (unless of course I'm currently shopping for a new NAS :lol: ).

But NetGear does do a woefully inadequate job keeping their drive compatibility list up-to-date. I know there are all kinds of "good" reasons for it not being up-to-date, but that doesn't change the fact that any time I'm drive shopping I can't find anything current on their list. That's the kind of thing that will make me consider a different brand NAS when it's time to purchase my next one.

Well, that and the length of time it took 4.1.9 to be released to fix the AFP speed issue, and then the mess it was when it showed up.

While i'm not advocating this to anyone else, I didn't look at the HCL for specific models of either memory or HDD. I looked at the broad specifications when upgrading the memory in the Ultra 4 I own, and when deciding on the SpinPoint F4 drives to put in it. That and the reported reliability of said drives / memory.

Now, this is isn't a tactic i'd reccomend to anyone else, it's just the way I approached it. I was lucky, but given that NetGear aren't likely to purchase (or beg/borrow/steal - delete as appropriate) every stick of RAM or HDD that can theoretically fit into a ReadyNAS, if what's on the HCL you can't (or won't) purchase, your going to have to decide if it's worth taking the risk.

For me it worked out. The Memory has been flawless, as every stick of memory I've ever purchased from Crucial always has been. And so far the HDD's are all running perfectly without issue. YMMV, but it was a gamble that paid off (at least up till now) for me.

Of course if you had bothered to look at the HCL, you would have noted the Samsung F4 2TB drives and the F3 2TB predecessor. There is no memory HCL because manufacturers were changing the module components without changing the model number. So older versions of a model number worked and newer ones did not. Then WD did the same thing on hard drives, but stopped doing that.

Ah yes but the HDD's weren't on the HCL at the time I purchased them. That much I do know. Because other people were asking when they'd be certified. I just took the leap of faith and did it anyway, before they made the list. Yep, your right about the memory. I upgraded the memory in my old Duo in much the same way. Looked at what specs the NAS required, and bought memory that was double the size but still fit those specs.