By: sierra_nevadas (15-Sep-08)      Experience with product: 1 Month

Strengths:	Easy to use; great user community; good tech support; easy to upgrade RAM
Weaknesses:	Expensive; uses older technology

Full User Summary
I had an original Infrant ReadyNAS before Netgear bought them up. I sold it when I got a Windows Home Server, only to regret the decision afterwards. As a result, I bought a replacement, now with the Netgear name. The only difference between the Netgear and Infrant boxes is the name on the front of the box! Oh, and the price is considerably higher!! If you shop around, this is probably one of the more expensive NAS boxes. I think prices will come down soon, as the competion is heating up. What the ReadyNAS has going for it is a great user community, excellent forums and good technical support. I easily upgraded the RAM from 256MB to 1GB, using instructions found on their support web-site. I use the X-RAID setup, and it's really easy to do. I replaced the two 500GB drives with four 1TB drives, and the process is a breeze. At one point I had a bad drive, and the replacement was also quite easy. Hot swap is supported, so I just pulled out the offending drive. I waited a few minutes for the system to recognize this event, then inserted the replacement drive. The system did a resync, and after about 8-hours, I was fully RAID protected again. Meanwhile, I was still able to use the system, albeat with reduced performance.

By: mschwaberow (23-Mar-08)      Experience with product: Not specified

Strengths:	-Compact Form Factor-Reliable-X-RAID allows easy expansion-Intuitive web interface-Several file sharing protocols for ease of use-Fantastic tech support-Great expandability through use of add-on
Weaknesses:	-Louder than expected-Slow when initially browsing the shares in Windows, then speeds up-Must reboot between add-on installations

Full User Summary
This is a great little box that does everything it advertises and more. It's speedy (20MB/s write, 34MB/s read), tiny, and just all around great. It's very flexible. There are several add-ons that allow extra functionality such as a download manager for http and bittorrent downloads (works as advertised) and a photo gallery (also works well). The company also provides an add-on that allows root ssh access as well as an apt-get tool so you can install nearly any linux package out there. I've installed php in addition to the already included MySQL and Apache to allow for a great little web server that can run all kinds of tools (gallery2, Joomla, etc.). One minor annoyance is that you have to reboot the box between add-on installs.I recently added a third 500 gig drive to the device. The process was nearly seamless, but there was a snag after the drive was initialized and expansion began - an error dialog came up with some cryptic error. A quick post to the ReadyNAS forums received an even faster response from a member of the ReadyNAS team (on a Saturday night, no less) - reboot. After that, everything worked fine.Overall, a fantastic product that allows for all the hacking and tweaking you'd like to put into it. The support on the product forums is exceptional.

By: scbv (16-Mar-08)      Experience with product: 14

Strengths:	* very easy setup* web based interface is powerful and easy to use* x-raid is automatically tuned to the number of drives* NAS continues to function(as expected) after a drive is "pulled"
Weaknesses:	* fan is a bit noisy for a quiet room

Full User Summary
if you can afford to pay for this box, you will not be disappointed. There is a night and day difference between this NAS with RAID compared to most the "DIY" NAS and/or RAID options. the web interface is clean, has lots of options to pick from. you can create share permissions by user, group or folder. you can auto configure the NAS to do backups at a specified time. you can also setup the NAS as a media server for uPNP devices and the readynas even has an iTunes server built in. i pulled out one of the drives to simulate a "failure" and the NAS noted the failure(it informed me via email) and continued to operate with all the data intact. when i replugged the drive in, it spent about 6 hours resynching to rebuild the RAID.

By: nuje4 (20-Dec-07)      Experience with product: 3

Strengths:	Setup is simple, upgrading is simple, usage is...simple!
Weaknesses:	Nothing yet.

Full User Summary
I purchased this raid in a 2x500gb configuration and also purchased two additional 500gb drives to fully populate it. Before ever powering it on, I inserted the additional drives hoping that what I read was true, that it would automatically configure itself to use them. Sure enough, once I installed the software on my computer and plugged the NAS in, it showed the first two drives as usable while it initialized the two new ones. Once they were initialized, they were automatically added to the RAID...couldn't have been simpler. File transfers were very straightforward, just a matter of mounting the shares that you set up in the wizard. Even pluggin in a USB drive was a painless affair. All in all, I am exceptionally pleased with this unit and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to someone looking for a little peace of mind for their digital memories.