spectrum48k

If anyone's thinking of buying one of these DON'T

Was asked to "repair" was recently for a friend.

Its a NAS - network attached storage device - basically an external hard disk connected to your network via an ethernet cable.

It has no web management interface
Its has numerous firware updates - which still don't rectify things
Its prone to "losing" hard disk partitions
You need install the client software on each PC to access the drive

To cut a long story short, this one couldn't see the 4 partitions it had created and was reporting no space left to create any new ones. So it was incapable of adding new ones or removing the old ones.

I had to remove and LOW LEVEL FORMAT the damn hard disc, just so it thought it was a brand new factory fresh drive. Now it hangs constantly trying to format the new partition.

Avoid - I've got a DLINK DNS-323 on my LAN, which works fine and includes a USB print server to boot (although the instruction are wrong in how to set up up the usb port correctly)

NB: Before anyone asks , all firmware and software are bang up to date on the Netgear box.

stevem2k

Thecus are just about to add a 3 drive system btw (they already do a 5 bay but it's expensive) , I have the N2100 2 bay and it's

James Neill

iTrader: (1)

Had one for about a week when they first came out. Just plain dreadul inmy opinion. Can't believe they ever passed internal testing. Strange, as most other netgear stuff is good.

ChrisB

Horrible, horrible piece of kit these. We got two in when they were new to eval. Set one up as a RAID1 mirror for two PCs. Endless problems with corrupted Word & Excel documents.

spectrum48k

Glad I'm not alone.

Think I'll just strip the drive out and fit an extrnal enclosure to it.

jowl

Best use for it: Door stop.


They were giving them away with some netgear switches or something at one point - then I read 2 reviews.....and bought a Bufallo linkstation - which as served me well for the past 2 years. More features, multi-platform. FTP Server etc etc

Moving to home fileserver next though

spectrum48k

Yes, I put a Buffalo in at work and its been *ok*. It'll occasionally lose its marbles when a usb drive is hot swapped (it houses a hard disk and has 2 external ports for usb drives)

I'd definitely recommend the DLINK 323 NAS, but just ignore the bloody instructions detailing how to get the USB print server working!!

jowl

I've only had a slight issue with the Linkstation losing time on a couple of occasions before I found a NTP time server - not very good when you sync files!

The one we have in the 'office' has a very noisy fan. Though for the price and service they've been great - though they are 2/3 years old now

mike1210

for tidy ones also check out these 2, first link below is Netgear but was bought off Infrant Technologies

Broadbandbuyer.co.uk | Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ 1TB Gigabit Network Storage (4x250GB) - RND4425

Broadbandbuyer.co.uk | Buffalo TeraStation Pro II 1.0TB Network Storage - TS-H1.0TGL/R5

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

We have a Buffalo 320Gb one, it works great so far Only issue is that it does not have a USB print server, which is a shame really

Thunder77

You can always build one yourself if you have a spare PC kicking around. I'm running this, free. Supports RAID and lots of other stuff. FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home