Netgear NV+ v2 and LaCie 2big NAS: A Second Look
by Ganesh T S on July 18, 2012 3:49 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Storage
- NAS
- LaCie
- NetGear
Coming to the business end of the review, one aspect stands out for the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2. It is the ReadyNAS Replicate add-on. Firmware stability seems to have improved, but the new features (sharing protocols in particular) should have really been available at launch time. The number of add-ons available is also much lower than that available for Netgear's SPARC and x86 based NAS units, though Netgear claims that the situation would improve in the coming months. More than 6 months have passed since the launch of the Marvell-based NAS units by Netgear, but the platform is yet to fully live up to its promise. Another worrisome aspect is the fact that enabling the additional features / services such as NFS seems to adversely affect performance. All said, Netgear does have one ace up its sleeve. The pricing of the unit is quite competitive. The NV+ v2 was recently available in a diskless configuration for less than $250 after rebates. For that price, one can't complain about the middling performance or lack of features.
On the other hand, LaCie seems to have done well in its first firmware update after the release of the units. There is substantial improvement in RAID-1 performance. The UI in LaCie NAS OS2 needs a little more work, but the latest firmware is definitely a good step forward.
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Zebble - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Netgear's ReadyNAS products in particular, dollar-for-dollar seem to always be a step behind Synology and QNAP. Synology has really got it figured out with a common firmware/featureset across all models, which is why I was surprised to read this article to find that all features are available across SPARC, x86 and now Netgear's ARM platform...Does the ReadyNAS make sense for anyone?
Zebble - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Correction: "all features are *not* available across SPARC, x86 and now Netgear's ARM platform..."chadwickba2 - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
A few months ago, I purchased the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Ultra 2 Plus and it is really nice. I have owned a Buffalo Linkstation Live, a Synology DS209+II, and several older external units and the unit I purchased blows them all away in performance. I have not owned a QSNAP, and it may be awesome. Synology products have very spotty performance in my experience. Synology does have the uniform upgrade and software down pat. Netgear is not even close on the software, but they are awesome in performance on my unit.philipma1957 - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
I have the synology 210+ it is pretty good and support was good. but it cost more the 400. so if this is 250 it may be worth a look.MrKane - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
Currently I'm operating a Synology 209+ and a Netgear Ultra 2.From my point of view the Netgear is acceptable" as a backup device, but as a more general server it is miles and miles behind Synology.
The user interface for one is just ancient on the Netgear, even though it's a newer model with more CPU and more memory.
The software on the Synology unit is way better. I'm running with it as a small LDAP server and connects Windows7, Mac and Linux clients to this. The media sharing sw on the Synology is by far more comfortable to use.
The Readynas Ultra server is for me purely an rsync backup server for the Synology server. IT should be more capable, but as it is now it was chosen purly because it was a cheap solution.
Evadman - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
I have 3 NV+'s, and have always been impressed with their stability and the UI from a home user and a power user standpoint. Their throughput is slower than pretty much everything else I have tried, but for me the stability and ease of setup were worth the tradeoff. I should have waited for the price to come down (I paid $1100 for the first diskless unit, and they are $250ish now). I wish they made one that supported more disks (8 or more) so I could move off my 20 disk 3 TB RAID60 array on my server that I have most of my stuff on. The NV+ work awesomely for backup purposes now.In a nutshell, each has it's upsides and downsides, and you need to pick the one that fits your needs better.
Tim Thorpe - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
I've had a readynas for about 5 years and couldn't be happier with it. Rarely have I had a problem with it, and when I did (I was unlucky enough to get one with a time bomb PSU) Netgear stood behind it out of warranty (Though it was a known issue). I'd gladly pick up a readyNAS again without hesitation though I was sad when inferant got bought by netgear.vetu8 - Sunday, January 26, 2020 - link
nice post.