NETGEAR ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus (Diskless) Network Attached Storage (RNDP400U)

I've been using the ReadyNAS series since before Netgear bought the company that started them: Infrant. My first ReadyNAS (NV+) failed once, corrupting all data. However, the corruption/failure never occurred again, not even with the successors, the ReadyNAS Ultra and ReadyNAS 300 series.One thing I disliked about all the older ReadyNAS was their slow network transmission speed. Files took forever to copy from one location to another. When Netgear decided to revamp the ReadyNAS series from scratch, basing its processor on the Intel processor, the company has made great progress in the performance department.The ReadyNAS 300 with its dual Gigabit connections is quite speedy, though it is not a top-performer when compared to some other brands, such as Qnap, Synology, Drobo. What I do like about the ReadyNAS 300 -- which is similar to the ReadyNAS Ultra -- are:1. X-RAID. Automatically expands your storage capacity as you add higher-capacity or additional drives without much user intervention. Traditionally, a RAID configuration requires you to back up the data, tear down the RAID, reconfigure it for the RAID protection you want, and restore the data onto it. X-RAID does away with that. For those who don't know what RAID is -- to put it simply, it provides storage protection. For example, if you have all 4 bays occupied with hard drives, you can lose 1 drive and still have your data intact. Simply replace the bad drive with a new one, and your RAID is rebuilt, and you now have a redundant storage system again. Lose 2 or more drives, and the data is lost. The chances of 2 drives failing at the same time, however, is slim.2. RSync over SSH. RSync is one of the protocols this device supports, which allows you to quickly and efficiently synchronize one ReadyNAS with another, or any device that supports RSync. The SSH function adds encryption to your data transfer. So, what does all this mean? I set up one ReadyNAS to do a secure, nightly backup from one location to another over the Internet. This ensures that files at both locations are always synchronized. In older ReadyNAS models, only RSync without SSH was available (without doing any hacking of its underlying Linux/Unix OS.)3. WOL. Wake-On-Lan. I absolutely love this feature: you can remotely turn on your ReadyNAS over the internet or anywhere on your network. Configuration of your router is required, and I will share some of that at the end of the review. I also use the free "NAS Utils" app from the Google Play Store to send these WOL commands with my Android phone. This same utility can also be used to look at the ReadyNAS log files, power it down, reboot it, check storage, and more.4. Plex Media Server. The product supports PMS! It comes right-out-the-box by enabling its app through its web-based administration page. PMS can be configured to look at your file shares to compile a beautiful interface of your music, picture, and video collection. You can then watch your movies through the web browser, tablet, or smartphone, even over the internet! Take a look at the [plex (dot) tv] website for more information. Note, however, that the PMS version that comes with the ReadyNAS is old. I'll share some tips on upgrading it at the end of the review.5. DLNA. ReadyNAS 300 supports DLNA, allowing you to point your Playstation, XBox, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, WD TV, smartphones, tablets, Smart TVs, and more, to your movie/music collection for play over Wifi/your home network.6. Backup button. The physical backup button at the front of the device is convenient. You can configure backup jobs, and at the push of this button, it'll then run the jobs in sequence. I've configured each job to email me job results on error.7. Supports various authentication methods, including Active Directory. You can configure the device to precisely control who has access to what share, how, and through what protocol.Some things I don't like about the ReadyNAS 300:a. UI issue: Scrolling. The web interface is not touch friendly. To scroll up and down at some of the configuration pages, you have to use a mouse. The scroll bar won't show up until you mouse over it.b. UI issue: Backup button. The physical backup button is a great, convenient feature. For some reason, Netgear decided not to be able to initiate that button from the web interface. For example, if I wanted to remotely tell the ReadyNAS to start the backup jobs, I'd have to manually launch each job one-by-one.c. UI issue: Backup button jobs. In the past, one used to be able to re-arrange the order of the jobs. With OS6, jobs are run in the order they were added. Further, only 1 job is now run at a time. In the past, multiple jobs could be configured to run concurrently.d. UI Issue: when powering on the NAS, I would like the option to have an email alert sent to me.e. Backup: backup jobs are handled sequentially. You cannot run multiple jobs at the same time like with the older ReadyNAS Ultra series.f. Plex Media Server cannot be easily upgraded to the latest version. In fact, the version that comes with the ReadyNAS is many, many months behind.Now, on to some tips.1. Netgear doesn't support upgrading the memory/RAM, but I bought the Crucial 4GB Single DDR3 1600 MT/S PC3-12800 Unbuffered SODIMM 204-Pin (https://amzn.to/3DzuEIQ) that works perfectly fine and has improved the ReadyNAS's performance a bit.2. Wake-On-LAN configuration. In the older ReadyNAS Ultra, WOL was very easy to configure. However, for some reason, with the ReadyNAS 300, I can only get WOL to work reliably by asking it to send the command as a Broadcast. This has to do with MAC address caching, but even with different switches/routers, I couldn't send the packet successfully with 100% certainty after 4 hours of waiting. As such, for issuing WOL commands over the Internet/WAN, I configured UDP 9 to point to the internal network's broadcast IP. In my case, it's 192.168.123.255 /24. WOL has worked every single time since.I also found that WOL only works over the Internet when the network cable is connected to the TOP network/ethernet port. If I remember right, that's Ethernet 1.3. RSync over SSH. WARNING: this is an ADVANCED configuration! If you don't know what you're doing, you could severely screw up your NAS! To do RSync over SSH, you first have to enable Rsync on the Target NAS. Then download the Certificate from the Source NAS, and add it to the Target NAS by pasting the SSH key (append) to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys (on the Target.) This tells the Target to trust the source's certificate. An example backup job can be configured as follows:Name: SOURCE copy to TARGETSource: Share | Name: share: sharename.Target: Remote | Name: remote:Rsync over Remote SSH | Host: addressofTarget | Path: /data. Advanced: Remove deleted files on sourceWARNING: be sure you test the backup job on dummy shares, not on production shares! This gives you the opportunity to ensure that the paths are all correct, and the job is configured the way you want it to behave.4. Plex Media Server: configure for playback over the Internet. I set up my router to point TCP 32400 to the ReadyNAS 300.5. Plex Media Server Upgrade. Before you can upgrade PMS, let me warn you first. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! This is an ADVANCED configuration, and could void your warranty. Because this is advanced, I'm going to assume that you understand the technical terms described below. The instructions were taken from the Plex forums. Amazon unfortunately won't let me link directly to that page. I modified the original instructions, and the one below is what worked for me.Understand that the ReadyNAS 300 runs "OS 6". First, TURN OFF your PMS app by going to the NAS' configuration page. Wait until it's confirmed to be turned off.a. Go to [Plex (dot) tv / downloads]. You will find a link there for "NAS". Choose Netgear > OS6 / Intel.b. Download the package -- it'll be a file called, "plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries_versionnumber_amd64.deb"c. Copy the download link of that file, and remove the "-binaries" part from the URL. The 2nd downloaded file should now be "plexmediaserver-ros6_versionnumber_amd64.deb"d. Copy the .deb packages via SSH/FileZilla to the NASe. From SSH, run the below command. Note that the "-binaries" file is the 2nd one:dpkg -i plexmediaserver-ros6_versionnumber_amd64.deb plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries_versionnumber_amd64.debIt will show you a few lines of output. You may see the activity light on your ReadyNAS start to flicker quite a bit, indicating that something is happening, especially when you already have PMS configured previously. On my ReadyNAS 300, it eventually appeared to freeze, but when I went back to the web configuration and checked the App version, it showed the new version that was just installed. I simply then SSH back into the NAS, re-ran the above dpkg -i command, and it completed this time (although with a couple errors.)Next, run the command:touch /apps/plexmediaserver/.localappVerify that the app version is the new one in the ReadyNAS administration page. You may now turn on the PMS app.Finally, launch Plex Media Server and configure the Transcode temporary folder to /apps/plexmediaserver/temp. You may have to turn on the Advanced Options to see the Transcode section.I have already performed 2 version upgrades with the above instructions without any problems. I also did this on the other ReadyNAS 300's.

Coming from the world of big iron servers and storage systems I was somewhat skeptical of these types of NAS devices. The RNDP400U is a refreshing surprise in that it does all that Netgear says it is supposed to do and more!I purchased this unit to replace an aging Sun server equipped with a SCSI Hardware RAID array that I have been using at home for years and that has become terribly inadequate in terms of storage capacity. I needed major more storage and I wanted to make certain that it would be reliable over the long term and easy to upgrade as the need arose.The OBE (Out of the Box Experience) was excellent. I just slipped the drives (2x  Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 ) into the first two bays and plugged it in. I fired up the discovery tool and presto, the web management page came up and I configured the unit. It did take 8+ hours to format the 2TB mirror which I thought was a pretty long time.Working my way through the menus I discovered the ability to add various Apps which NetGear calls Addons. The most valuable one was the ssh Addon that allowed me to ssh into the unit which as a Unix admin I was pleased to be able to do.I setup the various shares and user accounts via the web interface and then scheduled rsync jobs to copy the data from my Sun/Solaris server directly to the ReadyNAS.I also had a bunch of pictures and video on USB drives and found that they could be connected to the ReadyNAS and the files copied directly (using the ReadyNAS web interface) from the external USB drive to the ReadyNAS shares. Considering the GBytes of data that I had to deal with this saved me a bunch of time.Once everything was on the ReadyNAS I found that I could then use an external USB drive as a backup device! I REALLY love this feature! It allows me to connect an external USB drive that I can then backup everything on the ReadyNAS to and keep that drive in a safe/alternative location for disaster recovery. It gives me the peace of mind of knowing that if the ReadyNAS were to ever fail I would have a complete copy of my files on a USB drive that I could attach directly to any Linux system or restore directly to another ReadyNAS.The ReadyNAS also supports rsync which makes it very simple to setup regularly scheduled (from the ReadyNAS) backup jobs to offsite network storage. In addition you can schedule backups of your PCs directly from the ReadyNAS just using SMB and file sharing from each PC. This makes it pretty easy to backup any local files and settings from your PCs. Another great feature is the ability to make shares available using NFS so that any Unix/Linux system can mount shares directly from the ReadyNAS.The performance is really very good - especially when compared to my former Sun/Solaris with hardware SCSI RAID with high performance SCSI drives. It may be old but it is still very fast and the ReadyNAS performed 30-40% faster than the Sun server. Quite a feat when you consider that I am using the 5900rpm Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB drives. Power consumption is between 45 and 110W depending on the level of activity and this is just 15% of the power consumption of my Sun server and way less noise. The ReadyNAS is almost inaudible!!I am also impressed with the DLNA functionality. The ReadyNAS automagically appeared in the list of source on my Tivo and WD Live TV boxes and all music, video and picture were immediately accessible on those devices. No fuss!For those that are Unix nerds - having the ssh app allows you to login to the console and you will find a pretty standard (although stripped down) Linux distribution. You can do any and all things that you would expect to do from the command line on any typical Linux system. I personally found it very useful when I was moving and re-arranging the tones of files and stuff because I was able to things much faster directly from the command line vs. using Windows Explorer or the web browser interface. Given the level of power that I have found, I intend to configure email service to fully replace the email services being performed by by Sun/Solaris system and once that is complete I will be able to turn off the Sun power hog.I would highly recommend the RNDP400U to anyone who wants to have a solid, high performance NAS whether at home or at the office. The ability to have scheduled backup to a connected USB drive as well as network backup to other servers using rsync (whether another ReadyNAS or Unix system)and also to the ReadyNAS Vault - an offsite data storage service offered directly by NetGear and bundled with the RNDP400U which provides a 2 year trial of ReadyNAS Vault with 2GB of storage for Free.If you travel or want access to the stuff you have on the ReadyNAS Netgear provides web and ftp remote access and they also have a PC based ReadyNAS Remote that allows secure remote access to shares on the ReadyNAS without complicated router or VPN setup. Access from Windows and Macs are over File Explorer and Finder, so you can easily drag & drop files like you would normally do in your LAN environment. To use ReadyNAS Remote, you will need to install a small client on your PC or Mac and you're ready to go.The plethora of file sharing and streaming protocols is impressive fully supporting just about anything our digital media world could ask for and if it isn't built in there are Netgear offered addons and a vibrant community/open source that has all sorts of addons available as well. It is in fact the vibrancy of the ReadyNAS community that I find is a good indicator of how successful this product is and how likely it is to be supported well into the future. The open architecture of the ReadyNAS allows it to be used for far more than just a file server.After having the ReadyNAS in my home for several months I can say that I am very satisfied with it and have recommended to my friends and colleagues for their home and/or business needs. I am quite sure that anyone who purchases this or a similar/newer model will likely be very satisfied.

Don't be fooled by the marketing, the 3 licenses of Memeo PC backup software don't come with the product and when I called tech support they knew nothing about it. They could only send me to the Memeo web page where I could buy a license for $50.The FrontView(readyNAS) server software backup solution only backs up a shared partition. No complete file system backup. The instructions(which don't come with the machine) indicate that you must have the IP address of the machine that is sharing. This is insane in today's world with almost every router server IP addresses through DHCP, no one is using static IPs.Product support through the forums is awful. Online documentation is old and at times inaccurate.Link aggregation of the two gigabit outputs doesn't appear to be possible as there aren't any options in the FrontView software to configure it. (Documentation has pictures of options that don't exist)I had TimeMachine working, but for some reason it just stopped saying that the backup drive wasn't big enough even though there was more than 1TB of extra space.The ReadyNAS software is old, antiquated and confusing to say the least. My opinion, but I was looking at web interfaces like this in the 90's.I wish this product would have worked..... To end on a good note, when I did copy files to the server, it copied at a decent rate of 20-40MB/sec according to windows. The ReadyNAS seem to be for the type of person who like to tinker and/or fix things. If you just want something to work, this box isn't it.Best of luck to those that purchase this NAS.

This is my second ultra 4plus, I use it as my backup NAS. Strange you might think that you need two. My first NAS locked up when I was messing about with readyphotos2, I had to do a full reinstall. So a proper back up plan was needed, do a google search, most forums will tell you this. So how do two nas's get on together, fantastic. I use rsync which comes with them as standard, my files copy and sync , one category each night, photos, music and so on. Readynas replicate is a rip off but no doubt is good, but I couldn't justify the cost. I use a mixture of hdd's in both, I tend to use the older smaller ones in my back up. They take 3tb hdd's too. I've had no problems since having a proper back up plan for my vast amount of media. They are simply great at what they do. I use powerlines to stream media around the house, the whole system is fantastic. Get two nas's!