Question 1

Does Netgear ReadyNAS 314 (RN31442D-100NAS) include disk storage and if so, how much?

Accepted Answer

Hello Yakub Y,

Anytime you see a NAS enclosure labeled as "diskless", it means just what it says:  there are no disk drives included.  
You have to purchase the disks separately and add them yourself.   Fortunately, that is easy and relatively inexpensive.   I filled mine with Seagate drives.   4 x 4tb drives.   In the array, that yeilds about 12tb of usable storage.
I have hot-swapped them before and that is easy too.
Al

Question 2

What hard drives do you recommend? We are a small company 20 people and going to use this as our Knowledge management storage.

Accepted Answer

Netgear has a published list of compatible hard drives, google "netgear readynas approved hard drives"

We are using the 3.5" WD RED series and are happy so far.  We are a 60 person company across three locations, using Egnyte to sync the devices and offer cloud access and are very satisfied so far.  The Netgear box appears pretty cheap, but it works like a world-class device, is rock-solid, and pretty configurable.

- Fred G (ReVision Energy, Portland, Maine USA)

Question 3

does this unit configure for RAID 5.  Is the embedded software easy to use and configure. Is there phone support?

Accepted Answer

The ReadyNAS uses a proprietary RAID called X-RAID2 which is a modified version of RAID 5. It has some advantages in the way it allows to add additional drives on the fly, etc. My experience has been that it is very reliable and performs just as well as a RAID 5.

Software is very easy to manage the unit and is feature rich for the size and price range.

There is phone support, however, their support can be fairly slow. ReadyNAS has a large community of users who usually can answer your questions better and faster than Netgear support.

Question 4

Why some of the NAS boxes have more than one RJ45?

Accepted Answer

There are two network connections for two reasons: redundancy or extra bandwidth. You can simply keep one network connection unused as a backup in case the first one fails. In some rare cases, it might be useful to have the NAS connected to two different networks.  Or, if you have a high-end network switch, you can use both of the network connectors to create a higher bandwidth connection. This is called teaming and requires configuration of the NAS and the switch in order to work. Most servers these days come with two network connectors and the extra one is often used in Enterprise-grade networks to connect to a separate management network to monitor the device or the two are teamed together for higher bandwidth. Hope this helps!

Question 5

Does it support Windows XP?
Can separate folders be set up for each user?
Can folder be password protected by user?

Accepted Answer

I access mine with xp, win7, and with my media player wdtv lives.  I use ntfs.

With ntfs you can restrict access based on users.

I have two users that can access the device.  A read only user and a full rights user.  The read only user is my media players and other devices that do not need any other rights.

I believe seperation of folders per user is possible.  But I don't use that.

This NAS allows lots of control... Sorry if I didn't answer your questions entirely.

Hope that helps!

Question 6

Can this device be used as an FTP site?

Accepted Answer

Yes. If you configure your network correctly you could use this as an FTP site. It also can be configured as a VPN server if you needed one of those too! This thing can do almost anything.

Question 7

Does this support FTP, remote file\data management or Media streaming?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this unit has FTP as a part of its operating system and comes standard with a web interface to manage the whole system. You can also manage the files with Windows file sharing, which is also included. There are several options for media streaming, but the applications for this have to be installed separately. There are both paid and free versions of several streaming media applications that can be downloaded and installed. Check the manufacturer support pages for links to free applications and the user forums for information about installing them and troubleshooting any problems.

Question 8

Would you be able to start out with a 3-disk (4 TB each disk) 8 TB RAID-5 array and then expand it to a 4-disk 12 TB RAID-5 array later without having to reformat or recreate the RAID array (basically I wouldn't want to have to wipe the data or back it up, just do an in-place upgrade).

Also how long do you think 8 TB -> 12 TB migration would take?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you should be able to upgrade the array in the manor you specified. RAID5 was the default when I started using mine and you actually have to go into advanced mode to select anything else which then prompts you with a warning that you will not be able to add more disks to the array without formatting. I opted for RAID10 with four 3TB drives so I can't answer your question about the migration. It took several hours to migrate/format from RAID5 to RAID10 even though there was no data on the drives. Hopefully you'll get a more definitive answer from someone else, but overall I think you'll be pleased with the capabilities and rich features of this NAS.

Question 9

Do you feel the ReadyNAS 314 really worth the extra $300ish over the ReadyNAS 104?  (I am kind of on a $1000 budget for my storage needs)  What extra things should I expect to be able to do with this that doesn't work with the 104?

Accepted Answer

Have not owned a 104 so I can not tell you much about it.  The 314 I purchased is a SAN for my Photo business.  I wanted backup and reliabilibity to grow from 16 TB to 56TB if needed without having to start all over.  The 314 can add an extra chasis at a later time and thus expand.  The processor was 2.1Ghz Atom vs the 1.2 Ghz Marvel.  Software is pretty easy - almost too easy and I would have preferred a little more tech talk about whole disk encrypting the drives from the start so they can not be extracted and read without my key which the 314 supports.  So my answer to you is you get what you pay for.  Do you need expansion and faster cpu or can you get by with the little brother?

Question 10

Does it support SATA-3 drives?  6 Gbps?

Accepted Answer

At our business we use Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive.  Netgear won't support these, but they worked for us.  We went with the green ones because our servers spin down occasionally due to the lack of use.  Hope this helps!

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