NETGEAR RND2000-200NAS - Discontinued by Manufacturer

After reading the review about the firmware update, I purchased one of these for $130. Very worth the money. Mine came with the latest 5.3.5 firmware. Solid built metal case, server quality drive bays, gigabit NIC, netgear's RAID2, which allows easy upgrade of RAID 1 to larger disks, easy setup, configures like a router via web portal. If you don't know how to configure a router via web portal, don't buy any NAS, period. Super-easy with Win7 and XP to get to the device in network and copy and paste files. Fully configurable permissions access. Excellent 92mm cooling fan that is very quiet and cooling very well (it's 85F in my house this time of year) Copied 110 GB to it in 2 hours. Using a Seagate 1.5 TB SATA III 6Gb/s GREEN drive. The only hitches are: 1)can't pick up on a previously formatted drive, so can't swap unit if it dies, which is true of most NAS and 2)very tricky to do a factory reboot to get the disk formatted by it's RAID2. It took me 3 tries to get. Also the system will not shut down normally until it has a working disk in it. Don't let this worry you, just unplug it, however once the disk is installed, always shut down by pressing the power switch twice. I didn't try setting it to JBOD to see if would pick up of NTFS format. Most likely it won't, but manual didn't say much. Read the Hardware and Software manuals, there are lots of good info in them. Get the next higher up model with an LCD screen to it, if you can configure a router but consider it tricky or tough, but for a IT pro like me, no problem. $180 is a fair price for this quality device, at $130 just buy it. It also comes very well packaged. True: I have not test the USB ports on the unit yet, but mostly just need RJ-45 NIC connection. With the drive I have in it I was coping from RAID 0 black drives to the one Green in the unit and getting a transfer speed of between 45 MB/s and 70 MB/s , or about as fast as the Green drive can write. Nice.Update:All USB ports work great! The Unit works fine with all external HDD via USB 3.0 that I have tried. The Backup button is easily configured to do a quick incremental backup, which is nice that I don't have to have the external hooked up at a scheduled time, or have to start up from my desktop. Nope, just hit backup button! Also have the ReadyNAS Remote working so that I and my friends can access all the drive over the internet. It was a little tricky finding the software to download: [...] ... The NAS will read NTFS formatted externals fine. BTW: the NAS uses Linux EXT3 file system, so if the unit does die, put the drive in a 3.5" USB 3 cradle and hook it up to a Linux VM and you WILL get to your data! Tip about Externals: If the internal drive/partition is smaller than the external partition, the external drive is best configured as a GPT drive, and not MBR. If it is MBR, shrink the size of the external partition to equal the internal size, and make the rest of the drive a second partition. Tech Support was helpful in this issue. :) ... I'm sure they will have this fixed after firmware 5.3.7 ... This is the best quality/item/feature-rich thing I've ever spent on IT equipment per dollar. Wow! Just wish more HDD were on their HQL. 9 months later, and I'm still loving this thing! Best Robot going! You can do many more things with this NAS via add-ons, which are coming out every month. Hmmm ... Apache, php and MySQL would be NICE add-ons(hahaha, would need more RAM), and did I mention this thing is very fast?! It is. So far it only slows down when 2 of us are uploading 4GB ISO at the same time, but it does it.

-----Original 3-Star ReviewI purchased this NAS with the intent of rearranging my backup scenario and using my existing USB 3.0 external HDDs at full speed over the network. Its turning out to be more work than I expected for the former, and impossible for the latter.The Positive:* Reasonable performance for the price.* Fairly easy to configure, with share permissions that I found easier to configure than on prior ReadyNAS units.* The default configuration supports data redundancy if two drives are installed (RAID 1 equivalent). For many users this is perfect. OTOH, its quite easy to configure for RAID 0 if backups will be kept and speed is more important than redundancy.The Negative:Previously, all add-ons (apps designed to be installed on and run by the NAS) were available for free. Netgear is not moving from these add-ons to so-called 'Genie Apps', where users have to pay for some of the exact same add-ons that used to be free (such as P2P utilities, or a front-end for the MySQL server already installed in the NAS so that you can use it for your own databases; The usual Netgear official extensions, so far, remain free, such as ReadyNAS Photos or ReadyNAS Remote.).With the ReadyNAS Duo v2 and the ReadyNAS NV+ v2, Netgear is changing CPU architecture on their SOHO targeted NAS units from Sparc (used in the original Duo & NV/NV+) and x86 (used in the Ultra and Pro lines) to ARM. As these are a brand new line, I expect that Netgear will eventually squash the bugs, but until then, the unit fails to live up to the expectations of a prior ReadyNAS (x86) user.Case and point, Internet Protocol (IP) support is currently limited to IPv4 as of firmware v5.3.7. The network configuration specifically identifies it as IPv4, so I expect that this will EVENTUALLY be corrected, but I'm not holding my breath.With regards to USB 3.0 external HDDs, I have two existing 3 TB Western Digital units that are not recognized by the Duo v2 (but are recognized by other Netgear products). A little bit of research on the ReadyNAS forums turned up a posting that some USB 3 drives that have already been tested and are on the official Hardware Compatibility List do not work with the Duo v2 when 3 TB drives are used. This is especially frustrating, since my pair of external 3 TB drives would be the perfect compliment to the twin 3 TB HDDs that I'm running inside the Duo v2 with RAID 0.With regards to USB printers, I wasn't planning to use this via the NAS because there's much better support on my router (Netgear N900 WNDR4500), but prior ReadyNAS units were able to act as print servers for USB printers. While researching my other issues on the official forums, I noticed that the ARM-based ReadyNAS only support storage via USB.Conclusion:I've been using an x86 ReadyNAS unit (Pro Business) for the past four years. I chose to stay with Netgear for this purchase because of my experience with that unit and the USB 3 ports on the Duo v2. I was, therefore, quite disappointed to learn that my existing USB 3 HDDs won't work with the Duo v2 because they're too big. This is the sort of problem that I'd expect when 3 TB drives were first introduced (as was the case with the x86 units - fixed in x86 firmware 4.2.16, April, 2011), not with a new product that is introduced after 3 TB drives have been on the market for over a year and a half.----------Updated to 1-Star: April 2, 2013I didn't see the response from Netgear for several months after it was posted. When I followed up as they suggested, they checked their forums and found information that wasn't available when I first posted the review: they said that 3TB USB3 HDDs need to be reformatted on a PC before they'll work with the Duo v2.In my experience, this was partially correct. I had to REPARTITION on a PC, using GPT (GUID Partition Table), delete the reserved partition created automatically by Win 7 on GPT drives, then create a new partition of the full size of the drive & format it before the Duo v2 would recognize the drive. This required two different tools: the Disk Manager GUI to create GPT instead of Master Boot Record (MBR) partitions, and then the command-line tool DISKPART to delete the reserved partition and create a new partition using the full capacity of the drive.With that problem solved, I've run into additional trouble which Netgear Support is now trying to say is my fault: When you reboot the Duo v2, things disappear from the management interface.I've had two different things disappear upon rebooting the system (on different reboots): a user account and an external HDD.Just now as I type this, a level 3 Netgear Support Engineer has told me that the disappearing user account was caused by user error. This phantom user account no longer appears in the list of users in the management interface, but it can be used to access the system using the password I originally set up for the account, which I also can no longer change.When the external HDD disappeared, I confirmed that the drive itself (one of the 3TB USB3 drives I referenced earlier) was still working. I had to reboot the Duo v2 (risking even more glitches) in order for the Duo v2 to recognize that drive again.Updated Conclusion:This NAS is not for the faint of heart or those with no prior NAS experience. The firmware has serious glicthes that manifest when the system is rebooted, so make absolutely sure that you attach it to a UPS in order to reduce the number of reboots due to power fluctuations, and expect problems when you do reboot.-1 star needing to reformat new HDDs before they will work with the unit and for the reboot glitches; -1 star for support blaming a user for an error caused by rebooting the NAS.

Basic NAS; pretty dated now and the photo media sharing app was really pretty lame.However I use it regularly with rsync, plus a couple of added USB drives for additional safety. Good diagnostics and email - warned be of read errors on my main mirrored drive - so replace it and all's well.Best part is when I travel for any length of time this will fit in my safety deposit box.

So this is good product once it's up and running. If you are a novice and don't have any IT background or aren't too savvy get a time capsule from apple.I got it setup quickly but configuration is confusing in some areas especially the remote access stuff. I created a username that was my email address and wondering why when I logged into the remote access site it was saying my device was offline.Netgear support handled it and let me know that it was a bug. (They should not let you create a username with an @ symbol)Anyways, I can now access all my stuff via FTP, readyNAS remote and have my apple products backing up to it.It supports DLNA and you can assign that to any folder or share. Also you can configure permissions per folder as well as join it to a domain.It's a good product for short money but if you want something that's more enterprise worthy get a synology.