Netgear Readynas Duo RND2000 V2 Review

Even with its custom X-RAID2 volume allocation, the ReadyNAS Duo RND2000 V2 is neither the cheapest nor the fastest one.

Netgear's ReadyNAS RND2000 V2 is distinctive with the extremely well-built metal box. Installing 3.5inch hard disk in the volume allocation trays is quite easy. Simply, pop a button present at the bottom of each volume allocation and they are ready to be pulled out.

At the back of the NAS Duo RND2000, alongside its Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB3 Gigabit Ethernet ports are placed. There is also a USB2 port present at the front, just below the NAS's power and backup buttons.

With the installation of Hard disks, we are ready to use Netgear's RAIDar utility to locate the NAS on our local network so to configure it and format the hard disks. For the correct working of ReadyNAS, your hard disks have to be completely blank, so remember to delete any existing volumes if you are using any old hard drives.

Once the hard disks are formatted, you can now access the ReadyNAS login administration page using a web browser and map it to define drive letter using any web browser.

The ReadyNAS Duo RND2000 web interface provides you with nearly all the important elements with which you can administer and reconfigure your NAS RND2000. The Shares tab lets you individually set the properties of your ReadyNAS folders. Properties like DLNA, media streaming, and user access. A tab allows you to browse the ReadyNAS directories and any attached USB media storage device. It also provides a path to open music and image files.

The ReadyNAS Duo V2 also has power management options and detail backup. You can schedule it to sleep mode at different time intervals on different days of the week. You can also download a range of both community and official-created add-ons, which allow you use to use the ReadyNAS as cloud storage server, Squeezebox, video streamer, online photo album, BitTorrent server client, and many more.

These offer some extra functions, but ReadyNAS's add-ons vary from excellent to awful, so select add-ons carefully. Sadly, many of the users are not too much impressed with by the drab looks admin interface and slight cluck feel of the ReadyNAS setup process.

Sadly, the ReadyNAS Duo RND2000 V2 fails to perform well in the speed tests. Experts tested it using the RAID 0, RAID 1, and the default X-RAID 2 volume configurations. In all modes, it was found slower than other ReadyNAS models.

But the default average large data file transfer speed was of 35.8MB/s and a small data file transfer speed was nearly 9.8MB/s. That's admittedly good enough for online smooth media streaming, but this pocket saving ReadyNAS is strong competition for other cloud storage devices.