After over 2 years of faithful service I finally retired my D-Link DNS-323 and replaced it with a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. Not because I was necessarily dissatisfied with my DNS-323. More because I felt like I'd outgrown it.
The ReadyNAS offers the option to upgrade from the two slot Duo to the multi-slot NV+. Plus the ReadyNAS offered features the DNS-323 didn't have (without "tweaking the system"). One that I think will be truly useful is the option to connect an external USB hard drive to one of the three USB ports on the Duo and back up the NAS's contents for safe keeping (presumably off site). Another cool feature allows the ReadyNAS to be set up to allow users to browse the ReadyNAS via a web browser.
I also like that the ReadyNAS is running a true RAID 1 (ReadyNAS calls it XRAID). The DNS-323 has very limited integrity checking on the RAID which concerned me greatly after one of my drives dropped offline. The front panel LED's clearly showed it was offline, but the system maintained it wasn't. Further investigation proved the LED's were right, so out goes the DNS-323.
The conversion process was fairly straightforward. I pulled the "failed" drive from the DNS-323, wiped it clean and inserted it into the ReadyNAS Duo. The ReadyNAS detected the drive, formatted it and set it up for normal use. I then matched the settings from my DNS-323 and set about copying the files from one to the other. The whole process took about 24 hours. Not back for 300 some odd gigabytes of data.
So today the ReadyNAS takes it's place as my main NAS with twin Seagate 1 TB drives in RAID 1. I look forward to the experience ...
No comments:
Post a Comment