I have seen this device really slated in reviews saying the firmware was like a beta, that it could not do the most basic functions (e.g. user file permissions, cloud support flakey), was a nightmare, was underpowered, could not be upgraded etc etc.
What I want to know is whether this has all be resolved with new firmware ir is this still a dog to be avoided?
Model: RN10200|ReadyNAS 100 Series 2- Bay (Diskless)
The RN102 uses the same firmware (same feature set) as any other of the newer NAS models. Of the models I have is a RN102. Works perfectly fine. Now, one has to understand that this is not a powerful NAS and thus depending on your usage you might need a more powerful one.
Thanks for reply, so is that a way of saying it is not fit for purpose?
Here are some of the issues raised that I would like to know if solvded:
" Netgear: As a systems administrator, I’ve used and supported your switches and routers for years, but this product is abisimal. I wasted several days’ time and labor troubleshooting the buggy firmware, and attempting to get help from Tech Support. SHAME ON YOU!
Prospective buyer: RUN, don’t walk away from this product and any ReadyNAS product using OS 6, as they are not even ready for beta testing let alone a production environment!
Explanation:
The OS 6 firmware isn’t even ready for beta testing as it is riddled with bugs and features that don’t even work. For instance, you can’t create additional Administrator accounts, so if you want to designate others to manage the system, you all have to share the same Administrator account and password! This is completely contrary to best practice security procedures. Then there’s the problem where you can’t access any file shares from the cloud unless you are logged in as an Administrator. That’s not a typo! A Standard User account won’t see any of the shares, and thus, users can’t access their files. What’s the point of making files available to the cloud if users can’t even have access to them? Given these two MAJOR flaws, the only way you could get this unit to work (and any other ReadyNAS unit that uses OS 6) and allow users to access their files is to let them all share the sole Administrator account. But then you run the risk of inexperienced users inadvertently deleting files, deleting folders, changing global system settings, and even deleting entire volumes and their backups.
I opened a trouble ticket with Netgear and after detailing the problems with the firmware with the tech, and was promised someone would get back to me within 72 hours. After four days of not hearing anything, I called Tech Support again and this time I was told that they acknowledged the nature of my problems and agreed that it was system-wide flaw that would have to be addressed with a new firmware release. The tech wanted to escalate the problem to his engineers, and once again was promised someone would get back to me within 72 hours. After waiting another four days, I called Tech Support back again and informed them I was going to RMA the unit since Netgear was unresponsive to me and this problem.
Since then, Netgear released a new firmware, v6.0.6, and according to its release notes, still hasn’t addressed these major flaws along with numerous others that I haven’t mentioned here due to space constraints.
So, firstly this is a community forum. Most people here are users (like you) that try to help each other out. There is no need to copy/paste from a long email that you send to Netgear (mainly complaining about support).
I don't recall saying that this NAS was not fit for purpose? I use my RN102 to pull some backups from various devices in my house. It has been going without a hickup for 2-3 years since I got it. But, again - depending on your needs, you might need to get a NAS that fits your purpose.
To address your email. Most of it is based around critisism on Netgear support and not actual questions. The two specific questions you have:
- Multiple admin accounts. The NAS only has one admin account. That is not an issue. Regular users should definitely not access the NAS with admin accounts. They should have regular user accounts assgined to them.
- "A Standard User account won’t see any of the shares, and thus, users can’t access their files". I assume you are refering to ReadyCLOUD here? That should work fine now. One admin user can share content to regular users via the cloud. What you describe sounds like a permissions issue?
Anyhow, you are referencing a firmware that was released 3-4 years ago (6.0.6). The latest firmware is 6.5.1.
We will be happy answer some questions you have, but please ask those specific questions.
- What are your needs? - How many users? - What is the usage typically? - Any features you are particularly interested in? - etc.
So, firstly to ASSuME the message was from me was wrong, I have had a dozen Infrant/Netgear NV+ units, they always served me well albeit they have their quirks as any kit does.
However, there are posts like the above all over the web from different people, I saw that some are old and hence my question, have all the bugs been fixed now?
No you did not say it was not fit for purpose and goodness knows there seem to be a lot of purposes in the blurb,one site said it could support 5 users in a household streaming video, yet it can't trancode Plex.
Then you then say "Now, one has to understand that this is not a powerful NAS and thus depending on your usage you might need a more powerful one." so I figured it maybe it can't do all those things the blurb says very well. The general consensus elsewhere seems to be that it is underpowered and limited in memory which is not expandanle.
Although not my post, I am concerned about users having to have Admin accounts so you seem to suggest this issue has been fixed which is good.
You also suggest that the other issue the guy raised has been sorted so that is good too.
Well I am getting rid on the NV+ units because they use up so much power, drive capacities have increased and so a 2 drive unit should suffice.
I wonder if this unit can map a PC share and play a video from that share?
it is not so much an issue of how many users, but rather when I want to do something I want to do several things at once
There is no automation, I may just upload 50gb or 100gb of files or download them, I am not interested in this cloud stuff, too many security issue. I do not like Wizards, I prefer an old fashioned menu where I can config things.
I saw some videos on YouTube that show some super user friendly interface, not keen on that, I am no AppleBoy, I want to see under the hood. I might config it as an Itunes server if it can cope with that.
I do not like to install software on my PC's for devices, I prefer native \\192.168.1.x and mapping a share.
I would like to know if this unit will really benefit from high performance drives or is the network interface a bottleneck?
Can this NAS cope with file serving to a PC configured as a Plex Server?
Thanks for clarifying a bit 🙂 Let me try and answer your questions based on my own experience with it.
"I wonder if this unit can map a PC share and play a video from that share?"
Yes it can - but just streaming and not transcoding. In the past, I've used it quite a bit to stream all our 1080p movies to the TV. I used a Raspberry Pi with Kodi that streamed from the NAS. Streaming is not really an issue.
"it is not so much an issue of how many users, but rather when I want to do something I want to do several things at once"
Heavy multi-tasking it cannot no. But I have used it for things like streaming to the TV and working on files on the NAS at the same time. But again very light multitasking.
"I saw some videos on YouTube that show some super user friendly interface, not keen on that, I am no AppleBoy, I want to see under the hood. I might config it as an Itunes server if it can cope with that."
The userinterface is of course a polished interface where you can do most of what you need. However, I am in the same boat as you. I like the "under the hood" operations. The NAS is a Linux Debian install essentially and you have full access to the CLI if you want (through SSH). I configured most of my NAS via the CLI. But I use Linux a lot in my household, so it wanted a NAS where I can do that. Netgear does not support you doing this, in the sense that they may deny you support if you have "messed around" too much in the "backend". But that is fine. On the forums here there are plenty of people who use the CLI and will happily give some advise.
"I would like to know if this unit will really benefit from high performance drives or is the network interface a bottleneck?"
The real bottleneck here is the CPU. It is a small single core ARM processor. Buying high performance drives will gain you very little.
"Can this NAS cope with file serving to a PC configured as a Plex Server?"
I don't even think that you can install Plex from the apps menu anymore. I think they removed that. I just looked at my apps selection and I cannot find the Plex app on the RN102. You could of cause install it yourself. The NAS is not strong enough for any transcoding at all. However, streaming through Plex - possibly might be OK. Sorry, I don't use Plex so I never tried it on this unit.
I will agree with the "general consensus" that it is a bit on low side, in the powerhouse department. But I also think that it is always important to research what you buy. The hardware specs have always been visible in the datasheet.
For example, on any small netbook laptop I can technicall install any game or any application that I want. But I don't - I buy the laptop with right hardware specs for my needs.
Are you planning on buying one or do you have one already? It is for home use or business?
I got one on eBay because a friend say they were looking for one, Netgear have always worked well for me but then I saw the posts, so giving to friend not an option.
So now thinking I could use myself if I stick a couple of 4tb disks in.
I would never put Plex on this, I was thinking of mapping a share from this to a PC probably just going to stick external disk on PC. which will be the Plex server, just curious to see if it can cope as a backup library.
Just to be fair to Netgear, I would not put Plex on any NAS, not for technical reasons but because by the time you get to a box that has enough grunt to transcode (which is the whole reason you get Plex), you are in the territory of Corporate NAS units. These are over priced as a NAS server. On the other hand a cheap $250 headless PC with an HDMI port and a 4tb disk will transcode 1080p so spending $2000+ on an enterprise NAS makes no sense. I have a friend using such a PC to serve 3 TV's and a friend over the internet.
I think using the NAS as a Plex Libary would be fine. It would essentailly just stream to the PC. I don't see any issue with that. You are right that a powerful NAS can get expensive. If you ever wanted to do transcoding from the NAS itself, I would probably go with the RN212 or the RN214. They seem quite good.
(The reviews you have quoted here) This is the eternal issue with people buying the cheapest product and expecting the same performance as the most powerful one. The RN102 works very well for what it is, a cheap two bays NAS. If you only want to store some data and not much else, it's enough. If you want to transcode, have good performance on iSCSI, run lots of apps, you need another NAS. A system admin would exactly be in that situation. Instead of buying an RN102 he most likely should have bought an RN312... Also, there is mention of F/W 6.0.6, which is like three years old. I didn't read all the thread but I'm sensing that @Hopchen answered well already. Just wanted to share my point of view.
ReadyCLOUD was introduced in 6.2.0 so a review of 6.0.6 wouldn't have been talking about ReadyCLOUD.
If your only complaints with the NV+ were capacity limitations and power usage then the 102 should serve you fine. It's a more powerful NAS than the NV+.
You certainly can store your data on the NAS, but run Plex Media Server on your PC/Mac. A friend of mine did this with his NV+ units. For best results you should connect both the NAS and the PC/Mac to your network via Gigabit Ethernet.
It is worth noting that 4x2TB disks would get you 5.4TB capacity in a NV+ using X-RAID. You'd need to be using 8TB disks to be better off capacity wise in a 102. Personally I would go with a 4-bay as it is more expandable, but the best NAS for your needs does depend on both your storage requirements now and projected into the future.
And if you buy 8TB HDDs which are very expensive, it makes more sense to get an RN202 or RN212, which are dearer but also more powerful, in my opinion.
Isn't X-Raid a Netgear proprietary solution, I usually stick with standards like Raid5 to aid data recovery
I got this for a friend but with all the issues I have seen online decided may be best to use it myself.
4 bay is always better but I want to cut power usage, besides cost of kit is always coming down and you get better hardware developed as time goes on, so best to get what I need now.
I am only going to use for backup so will be powered off most of time, using as a storage for plex makes no sense when I can just stick a big hard disk in or outside PC..
Yes. The NV+ v1 (Sparc) uses an Infrant Infrant IT3107 Storage Processor. It's a Sparc CPU. This is the same model CPU that was used in the NV released back in February 2006. It's very old now.
The NV+ v2 released November 2011 uses a Marvell ARMv5 1.6Ghz CPU.
The RN102 uses a faster ARMv7 1.2Ghz CPU.
The RN202 is faster again with an Annapurna Alpine AL212 (dual-core) 1.4Ghz CPU
The RN212 is still faster with an Annapurna AL214 (quad-core) 1.4Ghz CPU
The RN102 has 512MB RAM whereas the RN202 and RN212 have 2GB RAM. As is typical for products using ARM CPUs, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard.
Isn't X-Raid a Netgear proprietary solution, I usually stick with standards like Raid5 to aid data recovery
X-RAID on Sparc ReadyNAS units was a bit different but it still used standard RAID levels. It used RAID-4 for X-RAID, but on those units for volumes created on RAIDiator 4.x, the volume used a large block size. This makes data recovery slightly more complicated but it is still possible using a standard x86 Linux machine.
All newer models use X-RAID2. X-RAID2 uses RAID-1 for two disks and RAID-5 for three or more disks. You can also use dual-redundancy (RAID-6) in systems with four or more disks if you wish. There's nothing proprietary about the RAID levels used. What we have done is to automate expansion. You don't have to use X-RAID2 if you don't want to.
4 bay is always better but I want to cut power usage, besides cost of kit is always coming down and you get better hardware developed as time goes on, so best to get what I need now.
Just wanted to make sure you were considering the options and the fact that going with the RN102 you'd need to use quite expensive disks to get higher capacity than what is possible with the NV+, even the NV+ v1 (the Sparc version that was limited to 4x2TB disks).
Generally it could be at least a few years between NAS purchases (if not more) so it is best to make a judgment as to how well a unit will suit your capacity needs for the time you think you will keep it however short or long, whether it will cater for your data growth during that time etc. You can start with smaller capacity disks and upgrade to higher capacity disks later on of course.
using as a storage for plex makes no sense when I can just stick a big hard disk in or outside PC..
Well if you connect a disk to your PC for use with Plex if that external disk fails all the data is gone. So it would make sense to have a backup of that data e.g. on the NAS.
No important data should be stored on just the one device. That goes for data stored on the NAS too regardless of what RAID level is used. If the only copy of data is on your NAS then it's not backed up.
