Netgear ReadyNAS NV+

While many NAS units look very utilitarian and like they belong hidden away, Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ looks like it belongs in a sleek office of the future. It backs up that look with a solid feature set, wide compatibility and great performance.

Out review unit arrived with a full complement of four Seagate 500GB drives spinning at 7,200RPM. Plugging in and extracting drives is simple -- each disk is screwed into a caddy and pushing a button pops a lever that can be used to pull the drive away from its SATA connector. Drives can be hot-swapped providing you've chosen an appropriate RAID configuration so that you don't lose or corrupt your data.

The first thing that stood out for us was the build quality of the ReadyNAS case. It's very solid and quite heavy. The drive trays are also well made and not flimsy. Given the weight of the ReadyNAS, a handle's been securely bolted on to the back of the unit to make it easier to pick up. As with a most multi-bay NAS units, it's not designed to be sitting on the desk next to your computer as the fan noise is a little loud. We'd suggest placing the ReadyNAS away from your main work area for that reason.

Set-up was very straight-forward, once the ReadyNAS was powered up and connected to our LAN via its gigabit ethernet connector. There are also three USB ports for connecting external disks, sharing printers or for adding a USB Wi-Fi adaptor. While performance will take a significant hit if you plan to use this as the main interface to the ReadyNAS it does provide some flexibility.

As far as set-up software goes, the ReadyNAS comes with Windows, Mac and Linux configuration utilities. The Netgear RAIDar application locates NAS units on the network and gives an easy to read view of the device's status. Running it on our test unit, we could see that disks 1 and 2 were operating correctly, disk 3 was absent and that the last disk was syncing data. An LCD panel on the front of the ReadyNAS gives a snapshot of system status as well. The RAIDar utility has a set-up button that opens a window in your default web browser so that you can get into the detailed set-up and status of the ReadyNAS.

Protocol and access support was broad. As well as the expected file-share access, the ReadyNAS could be accessed by HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. File system support was covered with CIFS, AFP and NFS. Linux users can also use Rsync for remote backups.

The set-up wizard did have one annoying feature. Before being able to hit the "Next" button and move on to the next step, we had to keep hitting the "Apply" button as well. If we didn't, the changes just made would be lost. It's a small annoyance but it got on our nerves a little as it was counter-intuitive. Also, the wizard required that we change the default administration password. That's a good thing to do but as a result you're dumped from the wizard as the change forces a log-out from the administration tool. You then need to run through the wizard again to get back to where you were so you can finish the process.

Access to shared volumes was easy. The ReadyNAS appeared in Windows Explorer and OS X's Finder and shared volumes, created in the set-up tool, could be easily accessed. Security on shares can be set either at a global level (everyone on the network has the same access), based on user accounts or it can integrate with a network domain, using the account names and setting access at that level. This sort of arrangement makes the ReadyNAS a viable option for small offices where changing administration needs can be accommodated without needing to replace the ReadyNAS.

We tested the ReadyNAS's by copying files, reading data,  watching movies from a shared volume and removing a disk from the array. The ReadyNAS did not miss a beat in any of those tests.  Copying large files, in excess of 300MB each, was swift with times being only a few seconds. The ReadNAS also supports running as a media server via the UPnP AV protocol. This means you can run a Media Center or iTunes library from the ReadyNAS.

Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+, is a solidly built, reliable NAS that is easy to set up and use. It's performance was very good and, other than some set-up issues, we couldn't fault its operation.