The ReadyNAS RND4250 is a new product in Netgear's line-up. Just how new becomes apparent when you consider that the ReadyNAS product line and its associated technologies were developed by Infrant Technologies, which only was acquired by Netgear on 3 May this year.
The RND4250 was developed to bring enterprise level storage technology to small business and home users at a reasonable price.
Test Procedure
Our test LAN consisted of a Dell PowerConnect 5212 Gigabit switch, while our client PC was a equipped with an AMD Athlon64 FX-62 CPU, 1GB of Corsair CM2X512-8500 memory and dual RAID Western Digital SATA(U150) WD150ADFD 10,000 RPM hard drive.
To test performance we ran some simple file transfer tests from the client PC over the isolated Gigabit LAN. Our first test was the transfer of a single 1,812,838,470 byte ZIP file, allowing us to calculate the maximum throughput rate.
The second test involved a folder containing 153 subfolders, 2656 files totalling 302,055,552 bytes to test how well the servers coped with more complex file transfers.
A further test involved streaming the High Definition video "Coral reef Adventure" to our client PC paying particular attention to the smoothness of the playback.
Design
The RND4250 is a tiny, and attractive, silver cube. It is surprisingly heavy given its small size, but its weight makes sense when you consider its internals: four 3.5-inch hard drives, a power supply and a hardened Linux based PC.
A mirrored plate at the front of the unit covers a two line LCD status display. While the mirrored surface looks very cool, it can be a pain to read when reflecting a strong light source.
The four drive cradles reside behind a silver mesh panel and are easy to remove and install, while the drive cradles can be locked to prevent accidental removal. The rear of the case has a sturdy carry handle, and a Kensington lock point to prevent it going walkabout. There is also a large cooling fan in the rear of the case that worked well to prevent overheating. Network connectivity is via a single Gigabit port.
Features
Netgear keep it simple with this product, the installation process is easy using an applet called RAIDar to utilise the RND4250 through a Web browser. During set-up the unit can be configured into several modes. "Share" access with an optional password that may be useful for home use, "User" access would be suitable for a corporate environment while "Domain" dovetails into a domain controller or ADS for user authentication.
User and group management is easy to use but lacks many features; for example a user can only belong to a single group. However this should be more than enough given the unit's intended market. The unit's sharing capacity includes three USB ports, and the front port can be paired with a configurable "backup" button for a simple one-touch backup to an external USB repository.
The two rear USB ports can be connected to other mass storage devices that can be shared in the same way as internal hard drives. Alternatively you can plug in a USB printer and share it over the network.
File protocol support is very good while streaming services are not-to-shabby either with configuration options for SlimServer, iTubes Streaming Server, UPnP AV and Home Media Streaming Server.
We found the simple descriptions of the configuration options to be particularly refreshing, and a novice user should feel quite comfortable with the configuration process.
RAID 0, 1 and 5 are supported as well as the proprietary X-RAID (which is essentially RAID 5 with sequential access optimisation for streaming media), which is an easily expandable technology.
The RAID implementation is aimed firmly at the lower end of the market, not to say it is a low quality technology, but rather it is designed to make life easier for those of us that do not want to spend time learning how to configure and migrate RAID drives.
A simple "smart" layer over a RAID controller allows a user to add an additional drive, or upgrade two drives to three for example. The smart software also automatically includes it in the existing RAID set and expands your capacity with no fuss. Once all four drive slots are populated, you can replace the drives one at a time with higher capacity drives and they will automatically rebuild.
Performance
Our first test which involved transfer of a single file from the client PC over isolated gigabit LAN to NAS, took 2.34 minutes. On the other hand, it took only 80 seconds to transfer a single big file of the same size.
Our second test was to see how well the servers coped with more complex file transfers. The ReadyNAS underperformed at our test lab, it took 1.40 minutes to transfer the multiple files from NAS to client PC. The size of this file was one quarter of the size of a single big file yet it took more time to transfer.
RND 4250 passed the third test with flying colours, with quality streaming of the video "Coral Reef Adventure" to our client PC.
Verdict
The RND 4250 is a tiny, sophisticated, attractive and well designed machine with robust high end server features. We found ReadyNAS easy to install, with the attached documentation easy to understand. The ReadyNAS has additional features like password authentication for home use and nominated access rights or ADS for user authentication which makes it a secure device. If any errors are encountered while taking a backup, the administrator is notified by an e-mail. The compact size of the RND 4250 means it won't occupy too much space.
Enex TestLab is one of Australia's most experienced, independent technology test facilities. After more than 16 years with RMIT IT TestLab, Enex's founders acquired the business from RMIT in 2005.
