Looking for a NAS box for Mom

Get yourself an Ultra or your Pro, transfer your files across your network to it and then wipe the Duo and give it to your Mum.

mdgm wrote:
Get yourself an Ultra or your Pro, transfer your files across your network to it and then wipe the Duo and give it to your Mum.

Sounds like a good idea. Also set it up so you can manage it remotely through the firewall. If there's enough capacity you can set them up so that her files are backed up on your new NAS, and at least some of yours are backed up on hers...

Folks,
Great idea I suppose, to upgrade my box, but there wasn't in the plan an option to spend MY money!
Sure, I suppose my upgrade would be offset by deducting my original purchase price for the 2110 (plus additional drive) but geez.

As it stands, and if i were to upgrade, not sure a "better" NAS box would be the way to go.
I lean more towards a home server that would dish out ASPX pages for example.

Devil's Advocate, what does a better NAS box get me?
I'm pretty good on storage now and the X-RAID at least feels good on the redundancy side.
Also, the recommendation is PRO or ULTRA... A little more specific please?

Just stumbled on this:
http://www.readynas.com/wp-content/uplo ... n_Home.pdf

and I suppose now have a better understand regards the netgear NAS option set.

In particular, am looking at the various ULTRA / PRO options.
Just one PRO option on the "Home" chart - assuming this is the PRO option referenced above?
UlTRA is however a different beast with 6 different options on the "Home" chart.

So, and per my eariler question, which upgrade paths are you recommending for ULTRA / PRO with consideration regards my being relatively content with my DUO? What for example am I missing? Sure, an open ended question perhaps since the answer is based on where I want to go but, because the recommendation to upgrade was offered here unsolicited, perhaps you see a compelling reason to jump up that I do not?

Okay, I'll help.

X-RAID2 is so much better than X-RAID because?
VOLUME MANAGEMENT is better because?
4+ DRIVES is better than 2 because? Sure, perhaps more storage space (assuming related to VOL MGMT if configured accordingly but that I assume impacts redundancy)
BETTER CPU / MORE MEMORY = better transfer speed? Very noticable?
MULTIPLE ETHERNET PORTS: support multiple networks? Perhaps better transfer speeds if you double connect into a single router?
FIRMWARE MEMORY: more apps? Are there apps avaialbe beyond those avaialble for the DUO that make upgrading more tempting?

The performance gain of the Ultra and Pro over the Duo is not subtle, it is very noticeable.
I have 2 different disk drive sizes in the Pro (xraid-2), so for me that was a nice-to-have.

If you are the only user, you will not get much gain from dual ethernet,.
You won't get aspx in anything but a Windows box.

I have a couple of plug-ins installed, though my main interest is storage, so other folks might be in a better position to comment.

Seems to me you already know the tradeoffs, I am not sure where you are going here.

flazer wrote:
Mom has a desktop and a laptop I'm looking for a box that might both her and my life easier!

I dunno flazer, I think you're making a mistake here. After all, it's been said many times "you gotta backup your NAS" i.e. it could fail as well, and in the end you have to buy something to back IT up so...

Why not just get her a USB drive and teach her to plug/unplug and backup with Macrium Reflect and/or Syncback?

StephenB wrote:
Seems to me you already know the tradeoffs, I am not sure where you are going here.

Thank you for your reply - I appreciate you validating my assumptions as well.

Original direction was to find something for my Mom.
Two responses nudged ME towards an upgrade path (and passing my DUO to Mom).

So, I was hoping to hear a compelling argument for the upgrade option since I wasn't (seemingly) fishing for one.
I suppose however the upgrade path make a little sense since it seems the DUO is the entry level platform.
But really still a hard sell for me to pay for an upgrade (the cost difference of a new minus what I can seel my old to mom for).

Frankly, I've not pushed the DUO to it's capacity... and money is tight...
I suppose I'd like to explore streaming possibilities but then I'd need to shell out more for receiving gadets.
Oh yeah, my eldest child close to college age... Did I say money was tight? :oops:

So right now, my box provides backup for the four machine in my home - and I have the FTP server to share "stuff" with a handful of buddies.

maxblack wrote:
I dunno flazer, I think you're making a mistake here. After all, it's been said many times "you gotta backup your NAS" i.e. it could fail as well, and in the end you have to buy something to back IT up so...

Appreciate your reply as well; however, not sure where you are headed here... If your box is a primary repository then yes, makes sense to have a second backup plan, But (as in this case), the box for mom would serve purely to back up: hard to see the need for yet anther box. After all, there would exists 3 copies for each of my mom's machines - the originals on each machine and the double copy in the NAS box (provided said box has 2+ physical drives).

maxblack wrote:
Why not just get her a USB drive and teach her to plug/unplug and backup with Macrium Reflect and/or Syncback?

I suppose those are options but (imho) it makes more sense to shoot for a more simple , centralized approach, that works for her. If I really wanted to, I could back up each machine on each other but experience shows keeping a direct connection between machine can be a flakey option at best. Heck she's having a hard time getting used to Window 7 from a recent Vista upgrade - and issues also configuring her Outlook GUI from the Default View to one she's comfortable with... Can't imagine her learning yet another "new" technology that may have a different "feel" between her two machines, especiallly since the machines are driven by different versions of OS (XP and 7)... Seamless and transparent to her I think is key , especially for my sanity!!!! 8)

But to be fair, I've not looked at either Macrium Reflect / Syncback... I'll do some reseach! However, I think long term, the NAS box route is the way to go for her, especially since it more closely mirrors my config and as I gain expertise over my domain, relatively speaking, I gain expertise over hers as well.

In the grand scheme of things, what ultimately comes out of this thread for me is (i think!) that the DUO is the entry level home NAS box solution for Netgear so really, it would be the solution for mom (provided I push for the minimum Neatgear NAS box solution). And if I go this route, I may as well pass along mine to her and upgrade my own - provided I can both justify and pay for it (the difference anyway)!

Thanks all :D

StephenB - I disagree slightly about the performance gain of the Ultra over the Duo, it is not just very noticeable it is night and day!

At least the performance difference between my original NV+ (approx 22MB/s file transfer speed) and my 32 bit NVX (50-60 MB/s file transfer speed) is. The Ultra would be even faster than my NVX since it has a more robust CPU and 64bit system vs the 32 bit system on the NVX.

The only gain you would get going from an Ultra 4 Plus to a Pro 4 would be the business features (if you need them) and the additional 2 years of warranty (5 years vs 3 years). However, currently the posted price of the Pro 4 is $10 more than the Ultra 4 Plus ($620 w/free shipping vs $600 w/$10 shipping). Sounds good to me.

The advantage of the 4 bay over the 2 bay is not only triple the volume size (in both 2 bay and 4 bay the redundancy is one disk) but the LED display on the front vs. decoding the light pattern. (The 4 bay and 6 bay still have the light pattern as well as the display panel.) The difference in X-Raid and X-Raid2 is the fact that the x-86 units support drives larger than 2TB and in the 4 and 6 bay will fully utilize the available space in mixed drives as long as there is redundancy. I have 2x3TB and 2x1TB drives in both my NVX units and they have a volume of 4.6TB. In the sparc based 4 bay (NV+) with X-Raid all the drives must be the larger capacity before it will expand.

PapaBear wrote:
... but the LED display on the front vs. decoding the light pattern...

PapaBear, don't even get me started on the LED display for the DUO... Perhaps that alone is reason to upgrade!!

"Hold the reset for 5 seconds, and your admin password resets to default, hold it for 30 and your drives are wiped", and make sure you keep your eye on the tiny little dots to see what's happening?? My goodness, if Netgear did anything wrong on the DUO, the LEDS would be my #1 answer! :evil:

Following your last post, if speed is not an issue, and it does not seem to be, then consider the NV+. From Newegg, it is $330 with shipping vs $190 for a second Duo. You can shut down you Duo, remove the drives, insert them into the NV+ and when you boot it should power right up with only an IP address change marking the difference. The interface is the same, and the performance is the same. You would gain the display panel on the front and the future expansion into the other two bays if you ever need it. Whether that is worth the extra money, is up to you. Obviously, the most economical plan at this point is to simply have your mom buy a new Duo and two drives, and you set it up for her.

If she is using Windows, you can map the Backup share in her Duo to a drive letter and almost any backup software package will back up to a drive letter.

I agree about the display panel, it is one reason I very rarely recommend the 2 bay units. But, they are so small there just isn't enough room for one.