This is a review of the Infrant ReadyNAS NV, not their newer NV+ (featuring quieter operation and an LCD display). This review was written by request (yup, Jason G., I’m talking about you).

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Out of the box, this is my favorite computer hardware. I bought a diskless ReadyNAS NV for around $663 including shipping (from NewEgg.com) and populated it with 4x 750 GB hard-drives. The initial firmware didn’t support these newly released Seagate 750s, so I populated it with 3x 750 until it could. It’s been solid and reliable ever since.

Pros:

  • Easy to setup, easy to configure
  • It’s reliable, and provides fast access to 3 TB of storage in a small form factor
  • It talks to APC UPSs so that it can shut down gracefully.
  • Can act as a printer share for USB printers.
  • Knows every protocol under the sun for file sharing, etc.
  • Can even act as a media share for iTunes, SlimServer
  • Has gigabit access to my critical files.

Cons:

  • It’s loud.
  • Configuration screens are not intuitive, and the user security is difficult to setup (you enable a service, then enable it on a share)
  • Doesn’t talk to cheap UPSes, only the expensive ones.
  • Configuration page doesn’t support Tab Mix Plus (my favorite firefox extension).
  • Cannot share video files via “Windows Media Connect”
  • SlimServer/iTunes server firmware doesn’t know enough not to try and share “protected” files, which hang up my Roku.

Installation notes:

  • Not really it’s fault, but it took me a while to figure out how to mount NFS onto my new LINUX and Mac machines (need to match IDs)
  • Make sure your Ethernet switch supports jumbo frames if you really want to make this fly. If not, no biggy, but the cheapest gigabit switches I bought (Trendnet) don’t support jumbo frames.

All in all, a great piece of equipment, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone.