Peripherals forum: Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2/2+ vs. Synology DS212/212j

Why? So far all the NAS I tried are compromises. And my latest server is meeting my goals and beyond as it is again some PC. Albeit a netbook at 5 to 11 Watts of power which what started me looking into the NAS in the first place.

Here's the reviews for each system you listed.

http://reviews.cnet.com/network-storage/netgear-readynas-ultra4-4tb/4505-3382_7-34142016.html?tag=subnav
(ouch. look at the user review.)

http://reviews.cnet.com/network-storage/synology-disk-station-ds211j/4505-3382_7-34463381.html?tag=mncol
(ouch, most folk have the same complaint I had of most NAS. "slow")

If Netgear is failing to fix products and the second item is slow I wonder if either is a contender for your NAS. I can't recommend any NAS today because they continue to try and miss what I expect and want from said boxes.
Bob

It was a 228 buck netbook (the emachine 250-1162 to be exact.) I have a Watt meter (the usual P3 from amazon.com) and it drops to about 7 watts when idle and the screen is off. I guess I could fiddle with Linux but the stock OS worked so I don't have to.

No compromises and I've returned about a dozen NAS boxes including that PogoPlug. The PogoPlug had promise but the software is just too screwed up. I'm sure it could be fixed but not today so back it went as well.

I can't try all possible models and I try to find the CNET reviews (you can find others) when possible. I see the Synology was off by one but my experience is a model with 200 or 201 is too similar 99.999% of the time.

I wonder if any of these makers will ever make a NAS that is just a NAS?
Bob

The problem I have with RAID 1 is that it rarely saves us. In fact it usually is a factor in losing it all. For example, if the user hit delete, both copies vanish. Of if there is an error, both get the error.

This is why I have moved to dual drives and a scheduled sync system. I guess until you enjoyed RAID 1's little issues then you might think it would save us from a failure.

And I have no less than 4 copies of stuff I can't lose. One is on my machine, 2 more on the faux NAS (server) and another on a backup drive that is not powered up except to sync with the system and then put back in storage.

There is a fifth copy of our digital photos and more on a 32GB memory stick. That's updated about once a month.
Bob

The reason I went with the little netbook is simple. It's a single digit of Watts.

Over the years I tried making some low power desktop PCs but all came in North of 75 Watts no mater what I tried. The netbook changed all that after Intel updated their northbridge chip to use less Watts. I had been tracking the development of such over the years so it was just the right solution for me. And not much more than the units noted above.

There are many sync softwares out there but the simplest is the XCOPY command. Here's a discussion about that.
http://forum.soft32.com/windows/XCOPY-copy-changed-files-ftopict378241.html

And since we can schedule that, it's one line of batch file code and we're done.

Hope this helps,
Bob

GoodSync
SyncBack

And simple one line scripts.

Finally, CLONEZILLA when I want the entire image.

The files are just files. We only need to copy them back to where they were. No proprietary software is required for the Sync software I listed. The files can be used where they are or copied to the new place.

It's that simple.

As to ownership and such, it's just a few clicks to take ownership of files on NTFS. So again, not any danger to the files unless the owner is not willing to click on the tabs and make the changes. Since NTFS is widely documented about this, I'll stop here.
Bob

"If you take a hard drive formatted as NTFS and move it to a new
computer, this new computer won't recognize it. I think this is the
security that NTFS provides."

Since this is false, I can't offer any discussion on that. Besides we need to reply to the top thread to carry.

But as I have done this many thousand times, the statement is false.