Over the years I have always wanted to play around/use one of the ReadyNAS units. Everything I read about them sounded great and over at AVSForum a ReadyNAS employee ran a power buy and offered support over the years and I was impressed. Enough that if I decided to go the NAS route I'd purchase a ReadyNAS. Well the week I begin my journey that employee leaves... bad luck I guess. Now I see another high visible one leaving... and once again no one new introduced beforehand as a replacement.
All of this time I thought when ReadyNAS was purchased by Netgear they retained a great deal of their culture. Sadly, when I needed support I found myself talking to overseas support which is OK in and of itself until they insisted the model I have isn't the model stamped on the front of the unit and can't offer support beyond saying they put the wrong model in the box. At that point I gave up on support which isn't all that unusual in this day and age.
However, I still thought the online forum would more than take care of my needs should any arise. But now seeing people disappear with no replacements in sight and a HCL list that's beyond small and largely contained of outdated drives that are virtually impossible to find (if not afford). After trying a few models with a few bumps my general impression is ReadyNAS to a large degree is dropping prices and more or less giving up on technology per se. Recent pricing on the DUO+ v2 (grabbed one for $118 - shopblt - deal although Amazon is currently $125) and NV+ v2 (grabbed a couple at $222 - amazon promotion). Are we seeing fire sells? Perhaps a mass market approach forgoing the technology and support?
What do you other users think? I'm sure you are have been around a lot longer than me and have a better feeling. I'm just trying to decide if I want to implement some small scale installations with them which will need to be maintained down the road. So far the only promising feature I have found is price which in my case only goes so far.
Charles R, Thanks for the post. It's nice to see the appreciation for the forum and the support you have received from the Jedi Council. While it will be hard to replace yoo-dah and chirpa, there are definitely new Jedi ready to lead the charge and bring a new wave of innovation and support to the community.
While I obviously can't say what is coming in future products... It's sure to have something new and exciting for everyone. 😄
Are there features missing in the current product which you need for the 'small scale installations' you have?
If you want support to look at your case, PM the details of the issue and some contact info.
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
Are there features missing in the current product which you need for the 'small scale installations' you have?
Support wise I worked through the issue (myself) which evolved around the NV+ v2 consistently crashing only when reading/writing files at faster speeds (than over a 100Mbps network). I tried several units and had identical results using a drive listed on the HCL. Well during the process the drive disappeared from the HCL (no I didn't dream it up :)) and moving to another drive on the list resolved the issue.
A lot of the goodwill I had built up was lost over this experience. And finding out the new models (arm based) lacked a good chunk of the features of the older models gave me the impression the new goal was a low cost approach over features and performance. Also, looking over the HCL I came away with the belief that time has virtually stood still regarding supporting current (not even new) drives and other hardware.
Right now if I turn off via the NV+ v2 or DUO v2 via the Dashboard after x hours (18 or so) you can't use WOL and if you try the power button stops working. You have to unplug/plug them in to get back online. Not that bad of a bug and I guess the line is virtually starting over with the arm processor and perhaps it's just a difficult translation time. Perhaps that also explains why new features aren't being released with new models.
As far as what's missing. It's more faith regarding features and support that will be available in the future. Will the HCL ever catch up to the current drives on the market, will the arm based models (entire line eventually) go beyond the older models or simply become a low-end line. Right now I have to wonder if I'll ever be able to use 4TB ( or larger) drives as an example.
Well during the process the drive disappeared from the HCL (no I didn't dream it up :)) and moving to another drive on the list resolved the issue.
What model drive was this?
Charles R wrote:
Also, looking over the HCL I came away with the belief that time has virtually stood still regarding supporting current (not even new) drives and other hardware.
I would also like to see them qualify more drives.
Charles R wrote:
As far as what's missing. It's more faith regarding features and support that will be available in the future. Will the HCL ever catch up to the current drives on the market, will the arm based models (entire line eventually) go beyond the older models or simply become a low-end line. Right now I have to wonder if I'll ever be able to use 4TB ( or larger) drives as an example.
In the x86 (Intel) units, some users have used 4TB drives and found them to work fine for them even though none are on the compatibility list yet. You may find the same if you try some in ARM units but if you run into issues using drives outside the list NetGear will be unable to help. NetGear performs rigorous testing before approving drives for use with the ReadyNAS.
Would it not be a good idea to test and qualify drives that users are all'ready using with success, i myself am using a drive Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM001 9YN164 that is not on the HCL its a chance i took because it was a very good price, and if it did not work i could just use it in my pc and get one that was on the HCL but it as worked flawlessly in my Duo v2.
Just because a user has success with a drive it doesn't necessarily mean it's compatible. NetGear does rigorous testing that exposes compatibility issues that an ordinary user might not discover for quite some time.
Having said that it would be good to see a number of more drives qualified.
The HCL either needs to be updated more often or retired - it isn't particularly useful to see which drives worked last year.
Here is a solution - write an add-on that aggressively phones home to Netgear with drive stats, errors, crash-dumps, logs and anything else that is useful to the developers and I'll run it on the twenty or so ReadyNAS's I have access to. I'm sure there are quite a few others that would do the same. I've got 500GB drives on the low end and 4TB drives on the high end and maybe half are on the HCL but they are all running in a RN somewhere. If you get enough auto-responses back that lead you to believe the drive is functional make a new list and populate it with the data you get back. Essentially, leverage your user base for hardware testing. While failures may be hard on some they are most probably going to be using and failing drives anyway given the state of the current HCL. When you get data back that indicates an incompatibility buy one and determine what you can do to mitigate the failure.
This works for memory, USB and network UPS's and printers too.
Anyone else willing to grant that much visibility into their home or business storage device for the betterment of the community?
Here is a solution - write an add-on that aggressively phones home to Netgear with drive stats, errors, crash-dumps, logs and anything else that is useful to the developers and I'll run it on the twenty or so ReadyNAS's I have access to.
This is already in development. I think the end goal is for it to be more part of a support contract, to automate RMAs and such. But I hope there will be a more basic version for reporting that is free for home users.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3 TB SATA III 64 MB Cache Bare/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD30EZRX
I documented the issue(s) I ran into on the Forum as it played out. Rightfully or wrongly the HCL presents a large reflection of ReadyNAS. Some what repeating myself... When I started to go down the NAS path my business was ReadyNAS' to lose. Simply from my past impressions. As I started to research current offerings I saw other manufacturers recommended higher and overall found them to be more up-to-date. Once again repeating myself... such as supporting roughly 5 times the number of drives.
Frankly, after the couple weeks I spent resolving drive issues (for a drive that was once on the list) I have zero interest in using one that isn't. I can just see as I add that fourth drive a year from now the entire array blowing up. 🙂 Why would one want to risk such when there are clearly alternatives.
Here is a solution - write an add-on that aggressively phones home to Netgear with drive stats, errors, crash-dumps, logs and anything else that is useful to the developers and I'll run it on the twenty or so ReadyNAS's I have access to.
This is already in development. I think the end goal is for it to be more part of a support contract, to automate RMAs and such. But I hope there will be a more basic version for reporting that is free for home users.
I hope so as well Chirpa it will a big advantage to everyone.
For what it's worth I ended my ReadyNAS adventure. WOL never worked and after going through my initial hard drive issues I came to find out the replacement (which was listed on the HCL) needs a certain firmware revision to be supported. Of course this was only posted several months after the drive was placed on the list (without any notes).
I ended up throwing my data on a PC I'm using for Windows Media Center (OTA DVRing). Certainly there are a few disadvantages but at least I don't have to worry about my drives not being supported down the road or any data corruption from drives that really aren't supported even though they are listed as such... at least for the moment.
Fry's continues to blow them out the door (DUO v2 $105 (with rebate)) but I'm going to resist for now. If drive prices ever drop (to any degree) I'll take another look and see how things are going...
I've been a big fan of the ReadyNAS -I have one X6 still chugging along. I appreciated that the products generally were on the leading edge for years. But it's hard for me to continue supporting ReadyNAS as the Ultra line is coming up on its 2nd anniversary - too long to keep the prosumer niche waiting on something with faster connectivity. Where is thunderbolt? A few competitors have it already. Not even a USB 3.0 in the Ultra 4 or 6 yet? And then some key employees departing... taken all together it is very disappointing. I suppose Netgear just doesnt see their acquisition of Infrant being all that strategically important and so it is just milking what they can with no investment (probably why you have some employees leaving - out of frustration). I for one cant wait much longer. Anyone have a good suggestion for a replacement NAS?
Infrant was acquired back in 2007. All the x86 (Intel) products (e.g. NVX, Ultra, Pro) are NetGear ones. The Pro was the first x86 ReadyNAS and released late 2008. The storage business is important to NetGear. Late last year the new entry-level devices (Duo/NV+ v2) was introduced and recently the exciting new high-end device the ReadyDATA 5200 was introduced. Both these new devices come with a new Dashboard web interface rather than the old Frontview web-interface found on older devices.
NetGear's also acquired Leaf Networks, and now has both ReadyNAS Remote (for Remote access to files) and ReadyNAS Replicate (backup NAS to NAS) which are simple to setup and don't require any port forwarding due to the software VPN used.
NetGear's also released the ReadyNAS Surveillance add-on recently.
The 4-bay and 6-bay Ultra/Ultra Plus/Pro Series devices were developed before the 2-bay ones so USB3 didn't make it to those.
I hear what you're saying mdgm, it's nice and all, but just not enough to keep being excited about. Especially not 2-bay products. It seems like to me some of the earlier Netgear products were developed on the coattails of the Infrant employees and their development pipeline. As time has gone on, were just not getting the same level of quality/excitement that won over the early adopters. Just been too long of a refresh cycle on the 4+ bay products. We need something sooner rather than later.
Lets see, they introduced the 4 bay NVX in 2009, the 4 bay Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro in late 2010 and the four bay NV+ in late 2011. Yep they certainly aren't introducing any products. Counting the NV and NV+ there have been 7 four bay products introduced since you bought your X6. As for Thunderbolt, I would rather see eSATA or USB3 as there are a lot more products out there. From what I found on Wikipedia, thundbolt is an update of the display port and uses the same port. That another one that never really caught on as it was competing with HDMI which is all but universal.
thunderbolt is pci-express on a cable instead of card. it certainly is not limited to displays, and can infact support just about anything that can run on a pci express buss including video, audio, disk io and more. There are and have been several mac-centric thunderbolt extenral drive/raid chassis available for some time now.
A nas with thunderbolt support, and a thunderbolt external drive/raid chassis would provide an excellent and super fast backup target for the main raid array without the expense and management/configuration/maintenance hassle that a separate nas device would entail.
As a mac user, hooking up a mac-mini to a Thunderbolt array such as those by Pegasus would enable full network storage support with virtually any application you could imagine serving that data directly - no hacks or addons. Not perhaps the cheapest option, but incredibly flexible especially given the ability to daisy multiple arrays. At this point in time I can see this being my next major upgrade.
Papabear, you're right about the 4-bay NV+ i missed in 2011. I was really speaking about the higher end of the readynas product line (ultra or better) - where I am still waiting for something with faster connectivity. USB2.0 in the ultra 4 and 6 didn't cut it in 2010 and it still doesn't in 2012. Hopefully wont have to wait much longer otherwise I'll have to find something else.
