NETGEAR ReadyNAS Ultra 6-bay (diskless) w/ 3 yr warranty

Pros: Quiet, relatively quick.

The Raid functions as expected, but a nice suprise: After installing my 5th drive to expand the capacity, the 4th drive developed errors.


The NAS didn't kill the RAID, (I think it was a function of the NAS 3GB WD Drives, not just the NAS), merely expanded to the 5th drive, warned me that the RAID didn't have redundancy, allowed me to remove the 4th drive (dead), install the replacement drive, and after "re-synching" redundancy was restored without having to restart/reset the NAS, and no loss of data.

Cons: Slow RAID functions, ReSynching and expansion seems slow at 38 Mb's/sec. But I don't have anything to compare it to. 9 - 13 hours to add 3TB to existing 3 drive RAID 5 with 4 TB of data.

Other Thoughts: I wish the dual nic's could teamed.

Pros: It is very quiet!

My initial review was fresh out of the box, and I had problems with configuring things.

A lot of the shortcomings were caused by purchasing 2 drives initially. Had I bought a 3rd drive to start with, I would have unlocked a lot more RAID functionality and not had the partitioning and reserved space issues that I had to start with.

That being said, After reading the manual (heaven forbid), I learned how to convert from Raid-X to Flex-RAID, and once I had installed a 3rd WD RED 3TB Drive I was able to configure Raid 5.

(Saddened that I couldn't convert from Raid-0 to Raid-5) on the fly, but that's the limitations of traditional RAID.

The web interface is annoying with the certificate error, but supposedly there's a reason for that.

It works for what it's designed for. I wish there were more apps and functionality but for storing pictures, video and backups it does what it needs to do.

I've got a 4th WD 3TB RED Drive coming this week (thx newegg), and probably buy a 5th thx to newegg this week.

Cons: Not very straightforward. Had to redo the RAID and config 2 -3 times before understanding some of the nuances.

Other Thoughts: I wish the NIC's could be teamed for better transfer rates, but all in all, I've come to like the box.

I wish it could be more like a dr*b* with the upsizing of drives for a mix-matched RAID that's also expandable, and perhaps that's what the RAD-X functionality was supposed to do, but I'm content with the Flex-RAID.

As long as I keep getting great priced (Thanks Newegg), Reliable WD 3TB Red drives, (Thanks WD), I'd Buy it again!

Pros: Functions as expected, including speed, interface, and quality of materials. Search for reviews outside of NewEgg; there is a great site that catalogs NAS systems and other networking gear for SOHO and SMB use, including benchmarks for all of these products. I'm not surprised by anything I have found with the unit, but I also spent a lot of time looking at the detailed reviews.

Cons: If you start with 3TB drives, you're going to have a bad time. The default firmware that comes on the device does not support 3TB drives natively, so you'll see the 742GB capacity with the 3TB drive.

Other Thoughts: If you have a smaller spare drive lying around, start with that, and update the firmware, then do a factory reset.

Otherwise, here is what I had to do since I was starting with 3TB drives that the unit would not recognize correctly:
-Setup system and realize that it won't support 3TB drives. Just start with one drive; it's a waste of time to start with more than one at first.
-Fire up RAIDar and find the unit, then get into the interface via web browser.
-Go to the ReadyNAS site and download the latest firmware. The automatic download/update firmware function in the unit's web interface did not work properly; just skip it and go manually.
-Then go to Update and hit the Local tab. Update the firmware.
-After updating the firmware, go back into the interface and do a Factory Reset. This will not push the firmware revision back, but will allow you to setup 3TB drives correctly as if it were fresh out of the box instead of with the odd size limitation at 742GB.
-Pull out smaller drive if used, otherwise, put in the amount of 3TB drives you have and go through the setup. You'll go through the setup again with RAIDar as if the unit was fresh out of the box, at which point you can select the RAID level (X-RAID2, or specify none, etc.)

Pros: Simple to configure. Plugged nic cable into laptop. Set nic 192.168.168.xxx install Raidar software on latop and manage the NAS.

Cons: Installed 3 TB Drive. 742 GB available. Installed 2nd 3TB drive. Re-Sync C: (1 hr 30 min. An additional 742 GB configured, but inaccessible.

Notification displayed that additional storage for expansion available after reboot.

Attempted to reboot via the Web Interface but the accept button was greyed out.

Manually rebooted the NAS and still no change.

Removed and re-added the second drive. Re-Syncing C: (1 hr 30 min) again.

Discovered that if I logged out, closed the browser, and re-opened and logged back in that the accept button for restarting the NAS was available. However the Re-Sync process already started.

I've got an additional 3TB drive on order should have it 3/25/2013. We'll see how much additional storage I have access to then.

Wish I would have known how much overhead the RaidX functionality used. Also wish there was a way to change the RAIDX to a standard Raid-5. Can't seem to find any functionality for that.

It also appears that the Dual NIC's can't be set up as a LAG for 2x throughput.

Discovered that periodically you'll have log out (and close) the web browser.

Other Thoughts: Interface could be more intuitive. Should show how much space is used for Storage/recovery/expansion.

Pros: Very easy hardware setup.
Very quiet.
Low power consumption.

Cons: Transfer speed is okay but I expected faster. Compared to RAID 10 setup we have on our file server, this NAS is about 30% slower.
Software setup is not as straight forward as hardware.

Other Thoughts: We originally planned to use this as our main file server but because of slower speed, we ended up using it as backup storage only.

Speed isn't that bad. It's probably adequate for most general purposes such as media streaming and such. Just not fast enough for our production need.

Pros: Hot swap drive bays, software X-raid 2 is pretty cool, allowing you to expand the RAID without having to do a full re-build. Firmware lets you do a decent amount of ad-ons and access control.

Cons: This is NOT a user friendly beginner NAS, just to get it set up requires knowing how to perform a factory reset, as well as most add ons require php and other forms of scripting usage.

Firmware stability is HORRIBLE. I've owned this for 3 months and the firmware has corrupted on me twice by just sitting there running. Netgear support is USELESS I had a ticket open with them for 1.5 months and I finally ended up fixing the corrupt OS myself by doing a full factory reset (wipes all data in the raid).

There is NO built in monitoring software that will tell you how the cpu and ram are being used, who is accessing what, or anything outside of current temp and SMART status of your drives. There is some monitoring software in the ad-ons but good luck getting them to work.

Other Thoughts: If your looking for a very simplistic NAS to just to local network file sharing and storage, aside from the corrupting core firmware, the box is great. It's small, quiet and energy efficient. But if your looking to do anything more with your NAS, whether it be VPN, FTPS, or DLNA streaming, stay away, it is capable of FTP and DLNA but both crash all the time, and no firmware updates are available for fixes, as well as mentioned before, Netgear support is useless when it comes to fixing it.

Pros: I have owned mine for a little over a year. never had any problems. I have updated every time a new firmware came out. There are lots of add-ons created both by Netgear and 3rd party groups that allow you to do a number of things with this box such as: torrent software, web server, media streaming, and so on. ISCSI is great if you want only a single computer to use a designated section of the NAS, and it seems to be a bit more responsive.

I also get decent throughput on my Readynas with jumbo frames enabled. I'm using a D-Link DIR-855 as my router, with CAT-7 cables connecting everything, and on the wirless side I have a D-Link DAP-1522 connecting my PS3, Xbox 360, and BD. For my Test I used Intel's NAS Performance Toolkit.

I filled it with 6x2TB Seagate constellation ES drives. for those of you with low transfer speeds, look at the disks you bought. I have 9TB showing out of the 12TB I put in. (RAID-5)

Cons: The interface takes learning, but when you figure it all out, it is simple enough to navigate on a semi-regular basis. As other reviewers have stated, the power light is really bright. The display panel is a little dim as well, but there is not much to read usually. The fan in the case tends to get dusty and can make a little noise when it gets dirty, otherwise the machine is very quiet.

Other Thoughts: I think if I upgraded the memory of the system it would perform a little better, but current performance is acceptable, so it is not a priority to upgrade memory at this time. however, if I were planning to run more than 1 or 2 add-ons, i would probably look at purching more RAM for this device.

Pros: Pretty display on the front. iSCSI, 6 bays, pretty quiet.

Cons: Discovery software looks like it was made in the 1980's. The disk tray require you to screw in the drives, really not necessary. The root software corrupts in the blink of an eye.

Other Thoughts: The root software was corrupt with the first two NEW harddrive I tried to setup an array with. After hours of reading on the Netgear website, many many others had encountered the same issue. Netgear had direction on how to reset the software back to factory. The instruction are not as simple as 'press reset for 10 seconds'. There is a very silly process for using the reset button. However, I did get it reset back to factory and the NAS did boot properly and set up the 2 harddrives. Once this was complete, I decided to add a 3rd harddrive to test it's expandable partition proficiency. 10 seconds after installing the 3rd harddrive, the NAS went unresponsive. I left it alone for a few hours hoping it was just slow with the addition of the new drive. Nope, it was still locked up and unpingable after hours of waiting. No choice but to hard reboot the device. The device powers back up and guess what message pops up? Corrupt root. LOL. This thing is trash.

Pros: Hot swappable, high capacity, high availability, loaded with features.

Cons: When I turned on disk quotas, performance became unacceptable. I had to turn quotas back off.

Other Thoughts: I've had mine for 10 months. I use it primarily as my media server along with my D-Link Boxee and am very happy. I've upgraded the firmware twice and have 8TB total of HDD space. I upgraded one of the HDD's once and it automatically recognized the increased space and expanded the RAID to use it simply by hot swapping.

Pros: None

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Just want to point out that even though users are putting in 12TB and only seeing 9TB, THAT IS THE WAY RAID 5 WORKS!

Please read up on this subject to understand why you will never see all of the space.

It's called Parity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5_usable_size