Netgear ReadyNAS 314
The
Netgear ReadyNAS would suit someone who wants lots and lots and lots of
storage. That’s thanks to its four drive bays (hot swappable, of course) and
RAID 5 capabilities. RAID 5 provides performance benefits (thanks to the data
being accessible on more than one drive) and security (thanks to redundancy),
while still delivering about 75% of the headline capacity.
The
review unit was provided with four 1TB drives installed, which meant 4TB of
capacity. So with RAID 5 operation it reported the same actual capacity as the
single-disk 3TB models. If you have a lot of tracks (or want to serve up a lot
of other data, especially video), then you can go up to 12TB equivalent with
this unit, with considerable security against a failing drive.
It
has other fancy features, such as the ability to add optional expansions, and
has two Ethernet ports allowing it to serve two different networks at once.
There’s an HDMI port which seemed to generate some basic text in a
computer-like output signal, the purposes of which remain unclear.
Connections:
2 x LAN (Gigabit), 2 x eSATA, 1 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x HDM
It
was fast. Copying the 118.8GB of music took 40 minutes and 12 seconds, which
comes to 50.4MBps (megabytes per second).
It
served up its lists fast as well, with rarely more than a two-second wait
between hitting a button on the client’s remote and the appropriate information
being provided on the screen.
The
unit’s ReadyDLNA application won’t transcode FLAC content for incompatible
clients, but the iTunes one does.
The
main DLNA list was basic: Album, Artist, Folders and Genre. Within Artist lists
of Albums are presented. And every way in to your music, the tracks are listed
in file-name alphabetical order, not track number order. So if you like
listening to your albums the way they should be played — from the start to the
finish — then you will need to make sure your tracks have been named with their
track number at the start. More usefully, if you have an album in more than one
format, then within the album title both tracks will be presented, but grouped
by format, so the whole thing will play first in FLAC, and then in MP3, say.
(iTunes could learn from this!)
You
can also download the Plex media server software to the unit. This works with
apps available on some consumer gear and computers to provide a visually richer
DLNA browsing experience. Using it with my regular gear the list presentation
was slow and with Window Media Player on my computer it just didn’t work at
all.
The
Netgear ReadyNAS would suit someone who wants lots and lots and lots of
storage.
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Netgear ReadyNAS 314
·
Price: $800 + drive/s Specifications ·
Firmware when tested: 6.08 ·
Connections: 2 x LAN (Gigabit), 2 x eSATA, 1 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB
3.0, 1 x HDM ·
Music access options: Album, Artist, Folders, Genre ·
Dimensions (whd): 134 x 205 x 223mm ·
Weight: 3.97kg (plus drives) ·
Warranty: Five years
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