I’ve been a fan of Netgear products since I first encountered them many years back. They’ve always felt top-notch and rugged compared to the flimsy plastic things their competitors were making. In fact, one of my first ethernet switches was a Netgear, clad in classic blue metal casing. That thing was a tank. I dragged it with me to college and back. It is still clinging to life, switching packets at my Grandmother’s house, tucked under a bed in their spare bedroom, hanging with the dust bunnies. I have a fancy gigabit switch these days - though, I’m considering getting one with more ports, possibly managed.
Anyway, enough nostalgia. The real purpose for this post is right here. A few weeks ago I was browsing around on several websites when I came across mention of Netgear’s ReadyNAS product line. Originally, I intended to build my own storage array, but after seeing this I had a change of heart (mostly because of the price!). The first ReadyNAS products in the line were produced by a company named Infrant, which Netgear has now acquired. The newest addition to the ReadyNAS line of products is the ReadyNAS Pro. All I can say about it is: Wow!
This thing most certainly does not disappoint. It is, quite simply, an amazing little box. Stuffed with a Core 2 Duo, a gigabyte of RAM, and dual redundant gigabit network links, it can move seriously large amounts of data - and fast. After reading nearly every review I could get my hands on, it was time to purchase.
I did some homework and shopped around to see who offered them and at what price. Netgear was offering a rebate to those buying the 1.5tb ReadyNAS PRO which entitled them to a free Nintendo Wii. After narrowing it down to a few of their approved e-tailers listed in the rebate terms, I decided to check one other, eaegis.com. They were not listed in the legal wording, but were available in a drop down list on the rebate site. I fired off an email, and within minutes had a response from Mohamed, which was also copied to their account manager, Kris, at Netgear. Mohamed and his teammates worked until my questions were all answered. Truth be told, eaegis is the most amazing company I have ever bought from online. They are very swift and incredibly thorough, a 10 out of 10!
The ordering process was very fast and simple, and I even had the chance to select the type of RAID setup I would like on my unit at order time. I placed my order around 7:40am on October 14th. At 7:41am I got my order confirmation email. At 7:50am, I got an email from Mohamed (does this guy ever go home?) stating that he was starting the burn-in test on my unit and would keep me updated. Eaegis is probably the only distributor that does a 48 hour burn in test on these units prior to shipping them to you. My unit passed all tests and was sent out two days later.
I made a cheesy unboxing video when the unit arrived, but I won’t be posting it for my reputation’s sake! Haha. The first day I had the unit I moved some files back and forth to test it and set up all of the shares that I was going to need. The second day I copied all of the content - more than 800 gigabytes worth. Transferring the data went much faster than I expected. It could have gone faster, but didn’t mostly because I wasn’t actively at the computer to click through Windows’ silly errors when it wasn’t sure what to do. I can get over 80 megabytes per second off the disks, easy. That’s absolutely insane. It’s faster to store data on the NAS than on local storage.
Since I’ve had the unit, I have had zero problems. It is stable as a rock - fast as lightning - and certainly much quieter than the server 2003 box that I was hosting my shares on before. I’ve got it set up to stream movies to our PS3’s (yes, we have two), to store virtual machine images (freeing up space on my MacBook Pro), and to host my iTunes library. I have the 500 gig external drive that came with my order (another freebie from eaegis!) set up to be a backup for some of my critical data (mostly just music, some documents), with backup jobs running three times a week without any attention from me.
The support for the unit is top notch. I joined their support forums in case I ever needed, but mostly it has been just for fun. It’s a great community filled with bright, helpful people who will try their best to get you through whatever pickle you may be in. I couldn’t have asked for more from these guys. Great product, great performance, great support.
Quoted speeds are 18 down, 1.5 up. Overall, this is a decent bit faster than my WOW! connection, for the same price… and if you know me, you know I love a deal. :-)