NETGEAR RNDP400U-100NAS Diskless ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Multimedia Desktop Storage System with iSCSI

Pros: Was a good price

Cons: The biggest news since I bought this from Newegg just a few months ago, is that Netgear has just announced their new OS for the new generation of NAS devices, and they have said they will NOT provide this new OS for their prior generation. That is INSANE. I will never purchase another Netgear NAS device again. I should have bought Synology, that support their devices with OS upgrades for YEARS. What a waste of money. ReadyNAS users are very upset about this decision, and Netgear's callous product lifecycle support is now known. Terrible, emabarrassing.

Pros: Works great. Installation is simple if you spend the time to find drives on the hardware compatibility list which is numerous. X-RAID2 is great. Support. Using DLNA service I am able to run videos, pictures, and music on it through my Sony Blu-Ray players. Also the add-ons are awesome.

Cons: Not the 6 disk version, wish I had paid for the extra space since X-Raid2 makes expanding the volume so easy.

Other Thoughts: Pairs well with CyberPower 1350VA UPS &
Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB Drives

Pros: Have owned this unit since November 2011.

It just works.
It just works.
Did I mention that it just works?

I installed 4 3TB drives (Hitachi GST Deskstar 0S03230) into the unit when I first purchased it. Set it up as X-RAID2 becuase it sounded cool (better upgradability than straight RAID 5). The device has just worked ever since.

I have it do weekly RAID scrubbing and so far no problems.

I don't know if it is the fastest device in the world, but I'm much happier with it than my DNS-343.

Cons: 1. Price? But as with most things you get what you pay for.
2. It does collect a lot of dust. Blew it completely out with an air compressor after a year and a LOT of dust came out. But not suprising since it sits there running 24/7. That and my house is pretty dusty (2 big dogs).

Other Thoughts: I am looking to replace my DNS-343 (older NAS) because I want to move to 3-4 TB drives. Now my only decision is whether to get the ReadyNas 4 bay Plus or the ReadyNas 6 Bay Plus. The 6 bay is pretty darn expensive, even over the 4 bay.

Pros: Quick transfers that fully utilize a gigabit network. Has many addons that are very useful and can handle many of the tasks my HTPC was taking care of.

I populated the unit with 4x 3TB WD Red drives. These are on Netgear's hardware compatibility list and have some NAS specific features.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Tayedrummer should drop his tech level meter a couple notches. Did you see that little bag of screws that came with the unit? Well, they're to attach the drives to the drive trays. Hard drives have two ways of mounting - on the side or bottom. Take a look at the bottom of the trays.

Pros: Was very surprised how easy this was to set up, contrary to some other opinions. I didn't expect that, based on other reviews. I do have a high technical knowledge, but still, this was a pleasure to set up. Just dropped in 4 2TB hard drives and let it do its magic. The device took literally about 15 minutes to get up and running, then it was accessible to configure while it took about 5 hours to "resync" the drives. Note: The fourth drive LED light on the chassis will blink while it is resycing the first time. At first I thought this was strange, but I searched through the ReadyNAS forum, and sure enough, that's the normal/correct behavior. Just let it do its thing, then about 5 hours later you have a system ready to go (although, you can use it during the resync if you want to... I avoided that).

Other big pro has been build quality. Was surprised and impressed at the build quality, right down to the hard drive trays. Note that it comes with screws so that you can secure the hard drives to the trays. I thought I saw someone mention that the drives are loose in some review. This is incorrect. The drives are locked in nicely -- just look through the box for a little bag of screws.

Speed has been very good as well. No problems there that I can tell. Granted, it's not a screamingly fast NAS, but it's perfectly respectable. On large files, I'm getting 75 MB/s+ on my less-than-optimized home network, with default settings. Maybe more. With large batches of small files, the performance drops as expected, like any other NAS in this price range.

Has all the right options for what I need. I don't need a bunch of crazy multimedia features (I've disabled those)... just a reliable, respectably quick NAS for backups and other files.

I also really like the built-in backup features of the FrontView web interface. Basically, you can pretty much backup anything to and from anything. This can truly be a set-and-forget device in that sense.

I haven't used all the features yet, so you may encounter issues that I haven't, but so far, this has been superb.

Cons: No major cons so far. I've only had it for two days, but I'm slamming it right now with terabytes of data. So far, so good.

If I were to criticize this at all so far, it might be the UI of the interface... which is a bit dated. But it does what it is supposed to do, and appears very stable. And how often are you going to be sitting there with the UI of the NAS open in a web browser? So I can't really consider this a con... it's very minor. Frankly, I'd rather them spend the time to make sure the NAS is stable and reliable (which so far it is), than wasting time on fancy AJAX UIs.

Other Thoughts: Very satisfied so far. This seems like a real winner of a NAS. Just remember that RAID is NOT a backup! You need to BACK this and any other RAID device up to external drives or another network location, if you use this as primary storage!

Pros: Pretty easy to set up. It seems to want totally clean drives so if you're using drives that had been in use before you'll get a 'failure to mount RAID' error. The fix is to hold the reset button on the back in with a pin, push the power button, wait for options to come up on the screen, release the reset, push the 'backup' button on the front until 'factory reset' pops up, then hit the power button. It will then format the drives the way it likes them and you're off and running. Once up and running was easy to find on the network. Runs the Logitech music server for their Squeezebox Touch.

Cons: The drive trays don't actually attach to the drives! The drives just sit in them so when you try and install the drives into the chassis the connectors on the drives often don't line up with the connectors on the backplane so you have to pull the tray out a little bit and try and wiggle it in there with your fingers. Really clumsy.

The problem with used drives could have been made simpler by having the unit ask "Format disc X?" on boot up. I had to find the fix on a forum as I couldn't find it in the literature.

Other Thoughts: Seems like a quick, stable unit once I got it up and running.

Pros: This is my first go with a NAS and I'm so glad I chose the Netgear. I'm running with 4 3TB drives with no issue. Setup was smooth and I love the possibilities. Would choose this again.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: Gave this to Dad for Christmas. Works like a dream!

Cons: None

Pros: Love this product, easy to use and setup. Have had no issues whatsoever. Bought this product for my parents so they would have one place to store all of thier photos and music and documents.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Haven't had it that long and like it enough I'm looking at getting another one for a friend. I'm confident that I can suggest this product for him to use w/o issues.

Pros: Very easy setup and install. Maintenence / Settings screen is very easy to use. Software manual is pretty straight forward - although it would be a little on the difficult side for someone who is non-tech heavy. Remote login is very nice and easy to setup.

Cons: Does not ship with firmware to support 3TB drives. Will work with other drives not on the 'supported HW list' but you are rolling the dice and will deny you tech support.

Other Thoughts: Installed using 4X Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS 3TB drives. These are off the supported HW list from ReadyNAS.com. Firmware the unit shipped with did not initially support 3TB drives. Updated to RadAR 4.3.3 (this is not firmware - used to detect the array) and the firmware Radiator 4.2.19. Updates were simple. With new firmware 3TB support was achieved. Operating in Raid5 with no issues - still loading files to it.

When you attach an external USB drive it will automatically connect to your LAN, but will not try to populate your array.

I am very pleased with its operation. It does cost a bit more than building an array from scratch. I see no reason to purchase one that has disks already installed - it was very easy to update and get 3TB support.

If you want an NAS with virtually zero difficulty in setup and operation get this one. If you are looking for something cheap - look somewhere else.