Share your successful ReadyNAS hardware setup

I've been using a ReadyNAS Duo for a month or two with a couple of Seagate 2TB "Green" drives in Raid1.

Here is my setup (which is currently working flawlessly):



Here is my Command and Control PC (not that anyone cares):



The router, PCs and Hub are gigabit. Both NASs are supposedly Gigabit but we all know they won't run anywhere near true Gigabit speed. The Western Digital NAS crawls even though it says "Gigabit Compatible", but I'm getting a read of about 42MB/s and 18MB/s write from the ReadyNAS which is pretty decent. (I get the same speeds when connected through the router or the hub).

I gotta say though I was so disappointed in the speeds of any NAS around the $200 mark (I've tested four different NASs not including the crappy WD NAS I have) that I almost skipped buying one completely in favor of using another PC just as a NAS since it will give you 60MB/s over a Gigabit LAN from PC to PC. I didn't because I just wanted something more compact. If I had spare room in a closet or something I might have gone with an old PC with a software RAID running Linux and a Gigabit PCI card.

I think these NAS manufacturers have a responsibility to put the actual transfer rates of their products right on the box, and in the information page for the product on their website, and right with the rest of the specs in the manual. None of this "Gigabit Compatible" crap, but actual transfer rates. It's like they go out of their way not to say what the transfer rates should be in ideal conditions. Even in the FAQ, when questions ask directly about performance and transfer speeds they skirt around the issue with "oh well, that depends on your system and o/s and drives and blah blah blah" when the fact is a Gigabit network device should be able to max out the network.

Only in one FAQ did they give transfer rates, and that was for a ReadyNAS NV, which they say does 30MB/s read and 24MB/s write which, again, is even less than USB 2.0 speeds. I don't see any point to purchasing a NAS that cannot exceed USB 2.0 speeds since I could just add another external USB 2.0 drive and share it over my network.

That's an awful lot of documentation I had to go through before I realized I wasn't going to find the transfer rates and I would have to test it myself. (I was looking for the information while I was in the store using one of their computers to access the Netgear and ReadyNAS websites trying to find out if I should try this NAS or not). All the other companies seemed to pull the same trick of avoiding transfer rates like the plague. Some of them would not exceed 100 Mb/s speeds yet touted Gigabit compatibility all over their packaging. I was tempted to fire off an email to Consumer Affairs Canada complaining about the misleading information on some of the products.

As I said, transferring from PC to PC always gives 60MB/s because the PCs and hard drives are faster than the network is. Most ~ $200 NASs that I tested get very poor transfer rates. This ReadyNAS Duo at least goes 5-10 MB/s over USB 2.0 when reading.

Anyway, that's my setup and my rant to go along with it. I guess I'm a little ticked because it took a week of testing different NASs before I found one in my price range that had what I think is half decent performance.