NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ v2 4-bay (diskless) w/ 3 yr warranty (RND4000-200NAS)

Pros: Great notification system, No downtime 1yr latter, X-Raid works great. Just does what it advertised as advertised. I have had no issues with speed. I switched to a newer Linksys N4500 dual band router (previous one was dual-band Netgear) and only noticed a increase in speeds. Definitely having it hooked up over gigabit ethernet makes a huge difference as well.

Cons: External power supply seems silly when the unit already has a massive fan and fairly large enclosure to begin with. Wish it came with a more comprehensive owners manual. The ReadyNAS forum is great but I wish it just had a thick PDF manual.

Other Thoughts: I got mine on sale from Newegg on sale, as part of a combo. I am not sure if this is still the best NAS for the price, but I love mine and would recommend it to anyone I know.

Pros: Good build quality, easy disk installation, easy to use.

Cons: Buggy firmware, lack of application support, lack of jumbo packets, pitiful throughput, single lan, horrible support

Other Thoughts: Bought this unit and sent it back after 2 weeks of use. This unit is full of bugs. It appears that it has been abandoned by Netgear. The most common problem appears to be the horrible throughput, same as i had. 20 - 30 MB's / s is all you are going to get out of this unit.

This unit does not support jumbo packets, but i had to overied this at the OS level. Overall this unit is underpowered and SLOW ! I sent this back for a QNAP TS-469 pro which is a far cry from this unit.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello Anonymous,

We are sorry to hear that you’ve returned the RND4000 and would like to apologize for any inconvenience. Although we know you have returned it, we welcome any feedback or questions from you. You can email us at newegg@netgear.com.

Regards,
NETGEAR Team

Pros: Easy to assemble, good transfer speed. assembled with 4 WD red drives

Cons: Instructions are poor, setup sheet did not cover any of the actual setup.

Other Thoughts: Luckily the Nas recognized all drives and formatted and set them up automatically. My nas is in another room so it did require a fair amount of up and down before the process was far enough along for the software to take over.

Pros: This drive is great its the only drive that I know of that you can add more drives as you go!
Also new update 5.3.7 came out!!!!!!
This update fixed the problems I was having with the ReadyNAS not connecting to PS3.
1. DMZ enabled
2. NFS enabled
3. AFP enabled
4. ReadyDLNA enabled
5. UPnP enabled
6. SMB enabled

All of these are enabled on my ReadyNAS some are probably over kill and not needed because I dont have MAC computers but everything works great, I give thumbs up to the programers at Netgear for this update it just made my life alot easier.

Cons: The speed sometimes is slow BUT what NAS out there does not get slow sometimes. If you think about network guys work around the clock to keep NAS drives up and running for business. 24/7 to keep it up to speed.

Other Thoughts: You must upgrade to 5.3.7 this update is HIGHLY recommend by ME!

Why because I said so :P

Pros: This is my first dive into a ReadyNas device. I have had several network drives, and used a pc for network shares;however I found both with issues. The network drives I have used in the past are slow, limited and fw updates for new features are slim to none. As far as the pc goes, you always have spyware/virus issues to think about and the pc uses much more power. With the nv+ v2, I have populated it with 4x3tb drives to total a redundant 8.3tb partition. It spins down when not in use, runs very quiet and cool and network speeds are more than acceptable (20 to 60 mb/s typically)I can stream a movie to my wife's laptop, stream one on the ps3, and stream one to my epic 4g and it is all smooth. This is with ip cams running on the wifi as well. VERY impressed with the multiple user access and speed of this box.

Cons: When you log into the http interface, you get a security certificate warning, the pages have a lot of lag when switching fields, the system reads everything in celcius instead of faranheit for temps (you can hover the mouse over the drive in the radar soft to see it in faranheit, but hope they add this option in the future). The firmware seems very immature for this product, however Netgear forums are very active and seem to be very helpful with questions. I have had disk full errors happening when copying files, I have found if I manually surf to the file location and click retry it continues. Due to the buggy code on this thing I knocked an egg off, but have heard FTP support is coming in the next firmware release. 1 gb ram should have been standard with this unit, but so far no issues with that.

Other Thoughts: I highly recommend thoroughly testing any drives used in this thing. All my drives are on the compatibility list(wd30ezrx), one was an OEM and one was a retail drive to start out with. The OEM drive initialized, I added the second drive to create the raid, and the mirror failed initialization. This corrupted the drives, removing the bad one still would not boot the device. I removed both drives, tested and verified the bad one(oem). I had to put the good drive on a pc and blank the drive, then reinstall and let it reformat itself to work. After I replaced the bad drive,I had a mirror of 2.7tb. I added the other 2 drives one at a time. It took a few days to create an 8.3tb partition, other than weird copy issues so far so good. I feel good about my purchase, will add a ups on the approved list one day soon.

Pros: USB 3.0 ports,Netgear brand, Easy Setup

Cons: Very buggy firmware, needs to be rebooted every couple of days, inability to set up private shares.

Other Thoughts: Drive was at a great pricepoint and love the Netgear brand. However, I'm quickly regretting this purchase. Firmware is buggy and the unit needs to be rebooted every couple of days. I'm hoping that Netgear will get their act together and bring out some good stable firmware for this unit (and provide private shares on folders). Sadly, I may need to return this unit or dump it on an auction site. Pretty disappointed in Netgear on this one. Was expecting better quality than this.

Pros: 12TB Max Capacity, USB 3.0 external ports

Cons: The other reviews pretty much hit everything that is wrong with this unit. If looking at it by itself without comparing it against anything else, it is not all too bad, but compared against the readynas V1, this thing looks terrible (and it is newer and much more expensive). This unit loves to just drop off the network in the middle of a large file copy to it (never have this problem with V1's).

The prices for this thing are all over the place. Last week it was $50 more than the ReadyNAS NV+ V1 making it a tough decision, today it is $150 more. We have 1 of these and 2 Readynas V1's. If 8TB of storage is enough for you, buy the V1 (it works better, crashes less) and save about $150 (right now)!!!!

Other Thoughts: I would highly recommend grabbing the V1's while they are available at the price they are now. If you put a ReadyNAS NV+ V1 side by side with a ReadyNAS NV+ V2 and load both of them with 4 new idential 2TB drives each, the readynas V1 is superior in every way!

Pros: Supports 3TB Drives!

Cons: Most of the functionality of the Readynas V1 has been removed from this unit. There are several imporant features that have been "removed" from this unit. Some are:

1 - You can not turn off home directories for individual users, every time you create a user, it will add an extra share folder, cluttering up the unit with a folder for each user

2 - Can no longer have Private Shares. Every shared folder is publicly broadcasted to Network Places/network neighborhood

3 - No more user Group permissions, If you have many shares, and decide to add a user, you will have to hand edit EVERY share to give the new user access to each share

4 - File Systems are not compatible with older ReadyNAS units, so if you are upgrading to this unit, you will have to buy a second set of hard drives and copy your data to this unit manually, there is no way to just "move the drives to the new unit"

5-As other review states, none of the Addons are compatible with this unit, and none have been

Other Thoughts: We are a HUGE readynas V1 user, we have several of these units, and have found them to be VERY reliable, high performance units, easy to configure.
By comparison, this thing is a disaster for many reasons:

1 - The units hardware is made MUCH cheaper than previous units, ie: they removed the dust filter from the front door air intake grill so the drives get covered in dust quickly. The power supply has been switched from a nice internal supply PC ATX style to a cheap external brick type that really clutters up the wiring.

2 - The new Frontview web administration software is very slow, has lots of animations,uses lots of javascripts, that have caused problems in some browsers, they should have stuck with the simple html interface they had before

3 - As other reviews state, the firmware is VERY immature and buggy

BOTTOM LINE - IF YOU NEED A RELIABLE NAS, BUY THE READYNAS NV+ V1, WHICH IS NOW DISCOUNTED $50+, FILL WITH 2T DRIVES,AND IF YOU NEED MORE SPACE, BUY A SECOND ONE!

Pros: Large drive support, fast, quiet

Cons: custom firmware and apps need some technical knowledge to get going. If you rely on pre packaged apps to install wait a while longer.

Other Thoughts: Great little NAS. Contrary to the previous poster who says there is no apps available, there are plenty of apps out there if a person is competent enough to compile source code. I already have apps such as bit torrent, apache, openbuild service, DNLA service, mythtv service running on the unit.

Pros: Supports 3TB Drives (This is the ONLY advantage over a readynas NV+)

Cons: Very immature product, None of the addons that have been developed for Readynas NV+ (ie bittorrent, etc) are compatible.
Different drive format than Readynas NV+ makes migration to this enclosure very difficult without losing all your data
Tech support for this Product is NONEXISTANT, if you call netgear support, they are NOT familiar with this product (they are only familiar with Readynas NV+ V1), and will give you the runaround until you let them close the case out of sheer fustration.

Other Thoughts: This thing is a nice piece of hardware, but due to the immaturity of the firmware, it makes an excellent paperweight or doorstop, I would not trust my data to it any further than I could throw it!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Brian,

I apologize for the issues that you are having with our 2nd generation of the NV+. Our 2nd generation is an entirely new platform, and hence the issue with the hard drive. With new products it does take time to develop the add-ons of the older generation.

Please contact us at Newegg@netgear.com and we can provide additional support.

Thank you,
NETGEAR team