| NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ v2 NAS Server |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Network | |
| Written by Bruce Normann | |
| Tuesday, 31 July 2012 | |
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NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ v2 NAS Server Review
Manufacturer: NETGEAR, Inc. Full disclosure: The product used in this review was supplied by NETGEAR My last NAS project was over-the-top, way over.... Retail cost of the assembled NAS, including eight drives and the 10GbE NIC was about $5,000. Let's get back to Earth, and spend some time with a NAS that we can all actually afford. The ReadyNAS NV+ from NETGEAR just got a tech refresh of its hardware and software, becoming the ReadyNAS NV+ v2 in the process. It's only $369.99 on a normal day, but until 9/30/12 NETGEAR has a rebate promotion going that will save you $100 on the diskless model, as well as the 2TB & 4TB versions. 
The NV+ v2 is aimed right at the typical small business owner or advanced home user, by virtue of its size and its form factor. With four bays you can have both capacity and redundancy with RAID 5 on a three or four disk array. RAID expansion and migration is made very easy with the built-in X-RAID2 software that manages all the hard work. NETGEAR currently offers three versions of the NV+ v2; a diskless model, with 2 TB pre-installed (2x1TB), and 4TB pre-installed (4x1TB). I tested the diskless model, so that I could use the same drives I have used during previous benchmark testing. I also wanted to test the ability to expand the storage size and migrate from a single disk to RAID 1 and then to RAID 5. In short, I wanted to get my hands dirty.... The NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ v2 uses a Marvell 6282 CPU, running at 1.6GHz and 256MB of DDR3 system memory to drive this storage server. A single Gigabit Ethernet network port is standard, and there is no expansion capability which will accommodate additional Network Interface Cards (NIC). Four SATA 3Gb/s drive bays offer single disk, JBOD, and RAID 0/1/5 configurations. The capability for hot spares is not available with any of the disk configurations. NETGEAR employs a 128MB flash memory module to store firmware and applications on the NV+ v2 motherboard. This acts like the system drive, yet it takes up very little space and uses almost no power. Benchmark Reviews has tested a wide array of QNAP NAS products, ranging from the QNAP TS-119 NAS single-disk offering made for home users, to the Goliath QNAP TS-879U-RP 8-Bay NAS for the storage needs of large businesses. We've recently tested the 6-bay TS-659 Pro II and the 4-bay TS-419P II Turbo-NAS servers, which fall in the middle between those two extremes. Let's see how this domesticated 4-bay device compares to its competitors.
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Comments
I've found that using an older computer, one of several Linux distros, a cheap Promise raid array card, and a couple of 1G NICs bridged in my favorite mode yield a much improved performance over the ReadyNAS at a similar price.
Everyone has their own priorities. At one point I owned both a Honda Civic and an older Porsche 911. Did I enjoy the high maintenance costs for the 911? NO. Did I enjoy the unmistakeable driving experience? YES!!! The exact opposite goes for the Honda....it was an appliance. I was lucky to have the best of both worlds, at the same time.
BTW, the NAS in daily use on my home network is a Marvell-based unit, and the performance is more than adequate in that context.
I went with a ReadyNAS because I didn't want another computer with it's associated keyboard/mouse/monitor and all the cables. I wanted a nice little box sitting in the corner of one desk. I also got a great FTP site without having to dig around for FTP software and set it up (configuring the ReadyNAS is pretty easy, even for a noob like me). So I can access my NAS from anywhere, and it's a great media server for my PS3 and our WiFi tablets. A PC as a NAS may out perform it, but it's nowhere near as convenient.
The Duo/NV+ v2 are very, very different. They use a Marvell ARM processor and due to the different CPU architecture have different firmware as well. The ARM CPU is much faster than the Infrant Sparc CPU in your Duo.
Sorry for a couple of noobish questions.I read the review but admittedly don't understand much of it. I have 2x 3TB drives I wish to use in a box like this for RAID 1 Mirroring. Will the full 3 tb be accessible to a 32bit XP machine? Will I be able to connect with usb 2.0 or will I get better throughput with the Intel(R) PRO/1000 MTW Network Connection.
It's a old machine but I really don't wanna replace if for a year or so as I have an i5 laptop for heavy processing and a superior desktop is unaffordable. I'm thinking £150 spent on a NAS will still have practical value in 3 years time whereas a used PC will look no better than this one. Thanks for any help.
NAS is Network Attached Storage, so you will be connecting it through your network, not USB. This will allow you to access it from both your laptop and your desktop assuming you have either a router or a hub on your network to plug it into. If the unit you select has a USB port, it's most likely for plugging in a printer or a USB hard drive for more added storage.
There are many great NAS solutions you could chose. You can't go wrong with Netgear products, but I've heard some decent things about some of the newer d-link NASs like the ShareCenter. All of them can be a bit of a chore to figure out. They all use local webpages to configure them through your network. Personally I would recommend staying away from the Western Digital (WD) "MyBooks". I have one here and it's dead slow, and you can't replace the drive in it.
I'm also using a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, which you can get for under $200 and it works great. Note you will have to purchase hard drives to install in it as it's just an enclosure.
You may want to poke around here a little more too as they have reviewed other NAS-like products that are pretty cool and allow you to RAID over the network. Some of them will work on both LAN and USB, which is pretty sweet. I haven't tried them myself, but they got decent reviews.
I am a complete novice but when my partner's machine crashed and as my Maxtor drive (160g) is now full I needed some reliable storage. I looked into things and went for the Netgear particularly because I wanted the Media streaming and storage capability of a NAS with a mirrored back up. I got a 4 bay for expansion downstream but for years I expect 2T of data will be loads for us. I got 2 x 2T WD Red's and have synchronised them but now it seems I can't change the RAID option now. I never caught where to do it in set up but do I now need to do a factory reboot which wipes the disks and reformats them to be able to get a RAID 1 set up? I think this is also called FLEX? Also the write speed seems incredibly slow. I think my router (BT Home Hub 3) may be the problem I have BT infinity and would have thought this meant stuff would fly over the network - but maybe not? Will that mean I can't stream from the NAS to the rest of my devices. Since the NAS install there does seem to be having a significant impact on the speed of all the devices in the house.All advice greatly appreciately thx Kelly
With the X-RAID2 software that Netgear created, you can go from a single disk or JBOD directly to a RAID volume without reformatting the disks. Even if you started with FLEX, though, you can use the FLEX Software to set up RAID 0,1, or 5. The only problem is you can't migrate between them with that re-format step. That's why I recommend the X-RAID2, especially if you are starting out with two drives and plan to expand later. Take a look here: #readynas.com/?p=656
As for the speed issues, it could be your router, I guess. I'm thinking that "BT" means British Telecom. I'm in the states, so I don't know much about their products, services, or hardware. I have never experienced any negative effects on the network as a whole by installing any NAS device on the network. In fact,I've had three NAS units from three different vendors running on the same network, all at once, and didn't have any issues. So, I'm having a hard time understanding how the NAS would slow down other devices (computers) on the network.
Map one of the folders on the NAS as a network drive (Right click on the folder in Windows explorer...) and then run the ATTO drive benchmark on it. Compare that to the one I did in this review.
BTW, What do you mean when you say "Both drives have the same data on them."? Were they in a RIAD1 setup? Are they two separate backups of your data? Is one your primary storage, and the other the backup for the primary drive? How did they get the same data on them, and how much data (..GB..) is on them?
You will need to get one more 3TB drive that doesn't need to have its data retained. Put that in first, format it, and copy one of your exisiting 3TB drives over to it via that USB drive enclosure. Then put that drive in, and create a linear volume or a RAID0 volume. Then copy the data from your second drive over. Then install that drive and use the X-RAID2 software to migrate the volume over to RAID5.
I've backed up all the data from the NV+ but I'm curious as to whether I can just replace all the disks from the NV+ & put these into the NV 2 plus without ill effects. It will be an interesting exercise as I think the worst that can happen is that everything gets reinitialized. It really depends how much information is carried in the firmware of the old NV+
I will let you all know what happens when I do the disk swap. This is an important exercise because of the scenario of your existing NAS unit needing to be replaced due to hardware failure.