NETGEAR ReadyNAS 424 4-bay Network Attached Storage Diskless (RN42400-100NES)

Ok a really great bit of kit bought it to condense two other nas drives, after a little bit of easy hdd installation, drive formating and a little bit of getting used to the user interface which is very functional and has a 101 facility's, I managed to start transferring the 12gig of data I've accumulated, this did take a long time but I was making sure this was done correctly so I was expecting this to take a while and wasn't hindered by the drive in anyway. There is far more to this drive than I need or ever will. (I'm sorry if you were reading this for one of my whitty/sarcastic reviews but I'm a techy and cannot be with this amazing product)

Absolutely superb. This is a box of utter reliability and ideal for somebody who records a lot of 4k video and wants to ensure that the files are absolutely secure.TIP: do not buy cheap drives for this top quality NAS drive. I'd recommend WD 'Red' drives.NB : 12TB drives take about 50 hours to format on first usage !

I added 4 X4tbye drives to this unit and plugged it in to my network after leaving it overnight I went back to it to find a 10Tbye drive that all my computers can save stuff to

I am in a quandary about this product. I have been using a Synology unit for some years, but had some old drives to try in the ReadyNAS, I started it with two 3Tb drives and all well. I then added two more 2Tb drives. Now, any sensible automated system would say, let's use Raid0 to make two 5Tb drives and then Raid1 on those, but the ReadyNAS appears to totally ignore the two 2Tb drives. Nor can its automated RaidX system create two Raid1 drives of 3Tb and 2Tb.The Synology system is beautifully polished, too, with regular updates. I am using the ReadyNAS for File History backup for want of any other ideas, and that seems fine. Essentially, all I have is a 4Tb Raid1 Synology that I use for just about everything else, and this unit, which configured itself as 3Tb Raid1, despite having two extra bays.Bringing WD into the picture too, their software is also inferior to Synology, so my vote is with the latter.

I have used Netgear products for a long while now and in general I have been pleased with everyone of them and this is no exception. I am currently running a 4 year old Ready NAS set up, also a 2 disc, in a small business which we use to provide remote access and this will replace it, as Netgear have improved most aspects, if I have understood the spec correctly and the upgraded security aspects are vital in the current climate.So, this is simple to physically set up as 3.5" discs slot easily into the carriage trays. The footprint is only marginally bigger than our current model, which is very compact, so this will fit any environment. Software set up is pretty intuitive, if you have some IT experience, but as this is aimed at the SME (up to 40 users), I guess many will be using an IT expert to set this up and I would recommend that approach to get the most out of this kit - we certainly benefited from that with our old system. Add in the ability to access this from pretty much any device and you have an adaptable, efficient system which should suit any SME. There's only one real criticism and that's been our experience with ReadyCloud, which has not been as smooth as we would have hoped and not up to the standard of the physical kit and software supplied here - it could be us, as not all our users are especially computer literate, but it's worth checking out before you lay out the cash for this.

I bought the ReadyNAS 422 recently.It is a great NAS. Easy to setup and use and the build quality is superb.It is fast as well, easily handling gigabit transfer speeds without breaking a sweat!

These are lovely!! Very nice packaging and presentation Happy with this product and the service given. I have yet to use it but it looks very well made. size is also just right thanks good product

Up till now I have been using a NETGEAR RN10400-100EUS Diskless ReadyNAS 104 4 Bay Personal Cloud Network Attached Storage (iTunes Server, Plex Server, DLNA Media Streaming and RAID) which has been working well since September 2014 (fitted with 4 x WD 3TB Red Drives).The drives all seem to be still working well reporting no errors so my plan (which worked) was to fit them in this and retire the old unit (I already have a backup of the data as no single device can ever guarantee 100% data security).I was curious if the new hardware would see the data on the raid array built by the earlier model. The drive trays seemed the same but I kept the original ones with each NAS just in case.No tools are required to fit 3.5" drives in the caddy's but a bag of screws are provided to mount 2.5" drives.I put the drives in the same slots and yes the data was still accessible and the front display listed the original NAS name. (the web interface however did not work). So if you have an earlier model with hardware failure and your backup of that has failed you could try this in desperation (If the data is vital of course, talk to a data recovery specialist).For reliable operation of course I wanted to reformat the array and just followed the instruction leaflet provided, basically holding the reset button on the back and selecting factory reset using the front buttons and information on the display (OLED).No software has to be installed on your PC to setup the NAS, you just enter the link in the manual and it should list the NAS on your network (the front display also gives it's IP address if you want a shortcut).By default with four drives, it already starts setting them up for use as a background task and the web interface is very similar to my old one except for an indexed search option and a lot more graphical information about the current and past performance of the NAS.It offers all the standard protocols and services and if you are not using DLNA clients I would disable ReadyDLNA so it does not waste time indexing files.It is a lot faster in operation, and I guess it should be, large files I can copy to it at 116.3 Mb/s and read at 113 Mb/s (using one of the two 1Gb Ethernet and all 1Gb networking). Of course, the NAS may be faster and my other hardware be limiting the speeds.Power Consumption (with my 4 x 3Tb WD Red Drives)Busy 30 WattsResting 18/20 WattsDrives Sleeping 11 WattsThe front display is off most of the time, coming on to tell you it is going to sleep or waking up, in fact you may not even know it is working unless you can hear the fan which is big but runs slow or you open the front door to see the four blue drive LED'sIn an office environment I think an option to leave the display active should have been included so you know its on.Device and drive power save options are the same as my old one and again for an office, I would just set them to power-save only out of office hours for peak performance.No complaints with it in operation and like the old one getting email alerts to work is tricky (depending upon your email providers security settings).All the graphs (under the performance tab) are very nice but possibly only if you have an issue which if you install a third party app may happen, otherwise after setup you may never look at them again.It can be setup to permit remote access to your data but I left this disabled as it is not needed.Also featured is a SnapShot feature which again I am not using, but it effectively lets you recover a changed file from before when the schedule snapshot took place. Most of my files are quite big and the contents typically do not change and thus I disabled it.Fitted with quality, approved drives in a RAID array it should offer a few years of reliable use (but still back it up).