Netgear RNR4450 ReadyNAS 1100 2 TB Rackmount Network Storage with Dual Gigabit Ports (4x500GB)
From Netgear
At last, there is a Network Attached Storage device for small businesses and home offices that allows you to quickly and easily add capacity or swap out drives without down time. The automated RAID expansion is made possible by our patent pending X-RAID technology while hot swap support allows you to replace a disk without powering down the system. Leading performance is assured with our custom network storage microprocessor and a Gigabit Ethernet network port. ReadyNAS couples out of the box deployment and easy management with robust file serving and data redundancy.
Size: 2 TB Brand: Netgear Model: RNR4450 Platform: Windows Format: CD Dimensions: 1.70" h x 12.50" w x 16.90" l, 18.00 pounds Hard Disk: 500GB
Very slow, atrocious web interface and poor support We've had one of these units for almost two years. On the bright side we haven't lost any data; but the system is very slow. This applies to both its file serving and its poorly designed web admin interface (you won't believe how slow it is and what a pain it is to use). We replaced an 8 year old Win2K desktop system (not a server mind you) with this unit and the decrease in performance was noticeable (10 - 20% slower). Performance on a 1 Gb/sec network isn't considerably better than on a 100 Mb/sec network. Support from Netgear consists primarily of them telling you to do system resets, firmware reinstalls and finally factory resets (where you get to reinstall all your data and configuration information). Apparently its much easier to have your customers do all the legwork than to write some diagnostics for your hardware. Stick with that old repurposed desktop as a file server, you'll be happier. Netgear Sucks We purchased our Netgear ReadyNAS 1100 2TB system on 12/15/2008 from Amazon.com - BTW: very smooth ordering, no issues there. After having one of my experienced programmers setup this equipment for automated backups, w/in a few days of running the ReadyNAS it's sending us daily automated messages indicating disk 4: "Reallocated sector count has increased in the last day." Basically, one of our four 500GB Seagate disks (Western Digital are much more reliable) is going bad w/in a few days of cranking this thing on. After contacting Netgear, we were told the disk is going bad and that they would happily replace it. Here's the good stuff. Even though today is 1/20/09 and we purchased the thing on 12/15/08 (that's just over 30 days ago), we'll have to pay $20 to have Netgear ship us a new drive so that we can then, ship the old one back. Now, $20 is a drop in the hat with all the equipment and it doesn't buy a happy meal from Micky D's for a family, but since when does purchasing a close to $2000 piece of equipment cost a penny more to fix when the hunk of junk doesn't work w/in a few days of having it up and running? We also called Netgear prior to purchasing this unit and went to their presales area via telephone. None of our questions could be answered by their Indian speaking reps... like speaking with a zoo animal. All I can say is that Netgear is pathetically disappointing and I regret spending 4K on this ReadyNAS and their switches over the last month.
