Netgear NAS free hard drive promotion extended to 30/09/2010

scene

Well-known member
Netgear have extended their summer offer of a extra free disk for their ReadyNAS duo range to 30/09/2010 (originally closed on 31/08/2010) - here
Basically buy a ReadyNAS RND2000, 2110 or 2120 and claim a free 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB drive extra free.

As you can get the 2TB RND2120 for about £250 online, getting 4TB of storage for £250 is a really good deal.
 

Gozaradio

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It's very important to point out that the ReadyNAS Duo ONLY runs in mirrored disk
mode; i.e. you can't use all the storage of both drives, s if you have 2
x 2Tb drives, you will have 2Tb of redundant storage, not 4Tb of
space. It's a limitation but one I was happy with as I wanted
redundancy (been ripping my music and video library in for many years
and don't want to go through all that again!)

I bought one of these last year under the same offer - I bought an empty unit but I still got a 500Gb HDD. It has been a great unit and serves up all my audio and video plus it's accessible over the internet and has a Torrent Client on board. It also has Squeezcentre (or whatever latest incarnation is called) on board.

I bought an empty unit for £150 in July 2009, bought two 1.5Tb drives for £75 each and got the free 500Gb drive. £300 all in for 1.5Tb of redundant network storage plus a 500Gb drive felt like a good deal!
 

scene

Well-known member
Good point about the nature of the 2nd disk Gozardio, should have made that myself
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scene

Well-known member
Update: Sorry, I just had a quick check on this (because it was bothering me). If you use the default X-Raid on the ReadyNAS duo, you can only use the second disk to provide a Raid1-like mirror of the first disk.

However, if you set the ReadyNAS to use Flex-Raid (which I think requires a factory reset), you can configure it to run in Raid0 mode, i.e. striped across both disks. This allows for 4TB of storage, albeit at a higher risk of data loss (but a little faster to write to).

So, the free hard drive does allow you to have 4TB of storage for £250, which is a great price per byte, but you lose data security...
 

scene

Well-known member
Gozaradio:Did not know that. Redundancy is more importnt to me but nice to know the flexibility is there.

Agreed. I've just received my ReadNAs and am installing it as I type - with X-Raid, redundancy is what I want as well
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scene

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brendonw:Nice little units those. Have had one for about 18 months with no probs :)

Yes I thought that, nice solid feeling build.

Was a bit concerned when I first fired it up as it sounded like concorde warming up, but once booted it is nice and quiet
 

scene

Well-known member
Ravey Gravey Davy:Scene- which one did you buy ,where from and how much if I may ask.
No problems Davy, I bought a RND2120 - the ReadyNAS duo with 1x2TB drive from Expansys.com. It was £259.99, but I notice they have now put their prices up to £304.99
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Crescent Electronics have 4 in stock at £251.99 + £5.99 shipping
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scene

Well-known member
Ravey Gravey Davy:Cheers Scene- Have you used Crescent before.?
Afraid not. I looked at them last week when looking at getting the NAS, but they were out of stock then, but their reviews looked OK...

I think the extension of the offer has cleared out stock nicely...
 
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Anonymous

Guest
do you guys find this drive pretty quick? I'm thinking about this as an upgrade from the freecom i have which often seems to not find all the sub-folders in a directory when you navigate into it, can be pretty annoying.
 

Gozaradio

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fast eddie:do you guys find this drive pretty quick? I'm thinking about this as an upgrade from the freecom i have which often seems to not find all the sub-folders in a directory when you navigate into it, can be pretty annoying.

It depends on your expectations and on the drive you put in there. I have a couple of Samsung ecogreen drives in there and I have no quibbles with speed. The higher end Netgear ReadyNAS units are faster (and a lot more expensive) but it's faster than a lot of cheap NAS units around.

I have no quibbles with mine; It serves up HD video across the network to my streamer while being written to by my desktop with no problem and I make no major demands upon it beyond that. When I transferred my 600Gb Music library to it, it definitely took a while but I just left it overnight. If speed is your priority, build a server out of an old PC or get a decent eSATA or Firewire 800 drive.

One thing I will say is that if the power is interrupted by a power cut / surge or accidentally unplugging it, it takes about 12 hours to sync the drives with 1.2Tb of data. Best thing is always to shut it down properly by holding down the power button for a few seconds or you can schedule when it should be on and off throughout the week.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Gozaradio, i'm looking at getting one of these readynas duo's and I see that you say you can stream HD video across your network. Reason I ask is because the only reason I want a nas drive is so I can burn all my Blu rays to a single unit and stream them to multiple rooms.

What do you use as the reciever from your nas drive to play video on your TV? I plan on using my PS3 to recieve HD in my bedroom and Apple TV for the lounge. Would this work? Can it stream 1080p and full HD audio (eg DTS HD Master Audio in full 5.1 / 7.1). (By the way, I would burn the Blu rays fully uncompressed, so not sure if the readynas can handle that sort of data rate)

It would all be connected through a gigabit ethernet router and wired with cat6e cable of course.

Would really appreciate the help as I know a fair bit about home cinema but nothing about HD media streaming!

Thanks
 

Gozaradio

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I don't have any BD rips so I can't say how well they work. However, given that Blu Ray's maximum bit rate is 40Mbps, I really don't think there would be a problem over ethernet, even if it were over a 100Mb connection.

As for Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio for full rips; I know of two streamers which are supposed to be able to pass through HD audio. One is the newer version of my media streamer; The Xtreamer (and Xtreamer Pro). These can both use an on board hard disk (2.5" and 3.5" respectively), so if you found that the network was too slow, you could always put your files on the local disk.

The other is the Popcorn Hour C-200. This is bigger and more expensive but it can also be fitted with a BD drive on board in addition to the HDD. A couple of people on this forum have them and are quite happy (as I am with my Xtreamer)

Both the PCH and Xtreamer *should* pass through HD audio through HDMI.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Thanks mate. I have checked out the Xtreamer Pro and it seems to be pretty good but I can't seem to find out if you can plug it into your router (via ethernet) and then output it across the network to multiple rooms via ethernet to my PS3's and Apple TVs'. Also from what I have read, it seems you can't output full uncompressed DTS HD Master Audio or Dolby True HD through ehternet cable without it downmixing to 2 channel. Apparently it can only be output through HDMI! Frustrating!

Can anyone confirm that this is true? I hope not because that would then mean I can't keep all my Blu Rays in a digital library and have to carry on using the discs like a caveman!
 

Gozaradio

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Both Xtreamers can act as NAS so you could access the files. Whether you could access them with a PS3, I'm not sure.

With regard to HD audio, I think you may be a little confued. The Xtreamer does output HD audio bitstreams over HDMI as you state. If you access a file over the network, then all the xtreamer is doing is serving up the file itself and nothing else. So if you have something at the other end reading the file which can output HD audio, then that's what you would get.

So, assuming your PS3 could access the Xtreamer's HDD over the network, and could play the BD rip files then I don't see why it wouldn't output HD audio. The big questions are whether it can do the first two things.

We're getting slightly off topic here but it seems to me that you need something which can serve up files for both a PS3 and another media streamer. In which case, you may want to look at getting something like the ReadyNAS plus the small Xtreamer with no HDD and let the ReadyNAS serve files to both the PS3 and the Xtreamer. It really depends on what you want to achieve.

Perhaps if you can write down exactly what you want to do and then start a thread in one of the other forums, you would probably find a help from more knowledgeable people than myself!
 

scene

Well-known member
Ravey Gravey Davy:Well I've bitten the bullet- should have mine tomorrow. Scene- how long did it take for your free drive to come through??
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I have been remiss with my paperwork... Haven't sent it off yet. It's on my to do tonight list...

I wanted to make sure the NAS worked OK before cutting up the box to get the barcode off. They say "allow upto to 28 days", and as I'm going to mirror mine, it's not an urgent thing. Might be different if you want to go RAID0 and get 4TB though. (sorry.)

Really embarrassing thing is I had all the paperwork completed before the NAS was delivered!
 

Ravey Gravey Davy

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scene:Great service - wish I could say the same about my new rear speakers! Have fun setting up the nas and I have now sent off the claim form!

My only issue at the moment is the look on the kids faces -you spent how much? Ok kids,when your complete itunes playlist/library disappears because the hard drive on your pc has gone down, you sort it out and rerecord.(and the noise coming from it tells me it is on the brink).Parenthood eh.Still - I can listen to it now as well.
 
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Anonymous

Guest
I got one yesterday, not had chance to set it up yet. Is it possible to allow something like remote access over the internet so a particular user could have read only access to certain folders. I'm just asking as the I could allow the brother-in-law to listen to my music on his laptop when he is away from home.
 

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