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Is there any episode of before you buy or any other show which talks about the Netgear ReadyNAS 104?


G+_Henning Andersen
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Is there any episode of before you buy or any other show which talks about the Netgear ReadyNAS 104? Or maybe some I'd you have personal experience with it? I'm thinking I'll buy one later today..

Is Gigabit ethernet capable of transfer data as fast as a HDD can read it, or will it be a bottleneck if I buy a fast HDD to put into it?

Thanks! :-)

http://www.komplett.no/k/ki.aspx?sku=781686#extra

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Assuming you're talking about spinning drives, http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2012/-01-Read-Throughput-Average-h2benchw-3.16,2901.html has a list of throughput averages. I just grabbed that page after a quick Google search for "hard drive transfer speeds."

 

1 gigabit/sec means 128 megabytes per second (that's including all network overhead, so actual useful data transfers can't be that fast).

 

I guess the real question is: what are you planning on doing with this? There aren't many applications where a gigabit bottleneck is actually a problem - video production is about the only thing I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure lots of people know of others. If you just want a box for backing up your system or video streaming, gigabit is serious overkill (though it's the right kind of overkill).

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Thanks for all the help guys! =) I've now ordered a ReadyNAS 104. With the sale, it was almost 4 times as cheap as the other ones, and the QNAP also had just two driveslots! As you say, capacity is more important to me than a lot of fancy features, and it seems the 104 can do a lot with the "apps" you can install on the NAS itself, wich gives you for example a torrent downloader.

 

Ill get it on monday or the day after, and i hope ill be happy.

I also bought a 1TB "NAS optimized" HDD as a starter. It's supposedly more energy saving etc etc...

 

Can't way to play around with it! =D

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I owned one and I wouldn't do it again. I would configure a low powered linux box next time as it's not really that hard to do, can be much cheaper, much better expandability and much more freedom about what you can and can't do with it. Moved my files to a drobo with the intention of building my storage server when I move in a few months.

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Hmm.. I could attempt the same thing.. I used to have a small eee laptop as a server for controlling lights etc, also for downloading and sharing files on the network. Lately it has not been up and running, and now that xp will be discontinued, I guess I'll start all over with Linux. But, I don't have the time I think to rebuild a new server.. And I don't know if the Tellstick Duo will even work with Linux. Also, I have to buy some new parts, I don't really have space for a computer, and it will use a lot more power..

If I ever get the time and money, I'll buy a new low power computer and start from scratch :-)

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Henning Andersen The reason I ditched the netgear readynas box was because I kept finding things it was either painstakingly slow at, such as transferring large files (700MB+), anything requiring any CPU or things which it couldn't do.  I did some maths to find out how much a tower PC would cost per year to run, which came out as roughly £30 ($48) worst case and decided that as I could use it for multiple things, such as web server, bittorrent server, fileserver and that it was infinitely expandable, practically free (I had an old tower laying around) and stable as hell (redynas did crash on me on occasion) it would be worth playing with.  If I was doing it again I'd rather buy either a second hand tower (probablly cheaper than the NAS) or a mainboard and PSU (again for the power you need v cheap).

 

Linux isn't hard, especially if you get the step by step server manual for something like ubuntu.  Windows could be good if you need some random compatibility but I've not used it since xp.  Found Linux to be much easier and more manageable, plus everything free and plenty of help on the web.  A cheap seccond hand mac mini is a third option which I've also used to fantastic effect.  They're low power, cheap if you don't get the most up to date model second hand (you won't need much for a NAS), and very similar to linux in reliability with easy as pie setup.  

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I've got a Readynas similar to that but probably an older model. Mine's 4 bay with 1gb RAM. 

It's been one of my favorite purchases partly to do with nice inbuilt features but mostly to do with the open app development around it via the community addons at

 

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=75

 

Some of the official addons are good to.

I'm using sabnzb, couchpotato and sickbeard on mine.

As for the gigabit thing, I transfer a lot of data over the network to a desktop PC now and then. Files copy at about 80MB/s. I'm using fairly low performance WD green 2tb drives in mine, so it probably would be faster with faster hard drives.

 

Nice inbuilt backup software that can write to USB connected drives. UPS support with automated shutdown (not sure of UPS models supported..... I just bought a UPS at random and it worked, but your mileage may vary)

 

I have the knowledge to build a similar machine around a Linux desktop, but electricity costs in Australia are starting to get a bit crazy. I'd be surprised if these didn't use a lot less power than an old desktop PC repurposed

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Henning Andersen I was looking at these some more today for a friend. 

My unit is one of the Pro units from about 4 years ago. It looks like it lines up with the Ultra spec (roughly) in the current line up.

 

The Ultras use an Intel atom CPU and have 1gb ram (better if you want to load extra apps).

 

the 104 looks to be ARM CPU based with 512mb RAM. A comparison with my older Intel pro unit probably isn't very valid. (mine is closer to the new Ultra units... which of course is more expensive). The software has changed since mine as well. They now have a Genie+ app store for addons.

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Got my Netgear 104 yesterday and got to play around with it a little. My first impression is very good!

I love the apps I've installed so far, like transmission (torrent downloader) and plex media server! I connected a couple of usb hdds and started to transfer a lot of gbs to it. At first a was a little afraid I had to leave the browser running to keep the file operation going, but it kept going after I logged of! :-) I was able to stream full HD movies, and the plex media server was surprisingly good!

I have not yet tried to transfer files to or from it over the network, but I will as soon as I set up my main pc again.

I also made a custom backup plan so that I can connect my GoPro or other cameras to the front usb, click a button and it will copy all files to "camera dump"!

Until now, I'm really happy with the speeds and functionality, although I have problems connecting to the genie marketplace..

 

Thanks again for all the pictures feedback and help I'm getting! :-D

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