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Netgear ReadyNAS NVX vs. QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS

post #1 of 12
9/12/09 at 3:44pm
Thread Starter 
I'm finally going to purchase a NAS. I've narrowed down my search and have come up with a brief description of pros and cons that stick out to me as being the differences between the two. My core needs are centralized storage and media streaming. What would you get and why?

Netgear ReadyNAS NVX - Product | Review
Netgear has an extremely active support community (http://www.readynas.com/) that has been around for a long time. Also, they have a great list of easy-to-install addons both from Netgear and from the community. I am going to be getting a MacBook Pro soon and like how easy it is to use Time Machine with the Netgear.

QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS - Product | Review
Qnap also has an active support community forums, but the steps and solutions to do things require more time and more technical expertise than Netgear. That isn't a huge problem for me, but I just don't have the time anymore to solve problems. For example, installing a better BT client like rtorrent or Tranmission seems to be complicated and hit or miss. When setting up Time Machine, it requires a more complicated/technical process than with the Netgear. Qnap has AES 256-bit volume-based encryption which I definitely like (you never know) and 2 External eSATA ports for quick access to additional hard drives.
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post #2 of 12
9/13/09 at 2:36pm
I am planning to go with Netgear. I own one of the original Infrant (now Netgear) X6 NAS drives. The reason I will buy either the NVX or the Pro Pioneer is the support they have given me on what is almost a five year old product. All of the software upgrades to this point in the sparc series have supported my NAS. I can't think of another vendor who has done that. Heck I bought a dLink DSM-520 which while a pretty good media server, never got to version 2 of the software and never was able to meet all the claims on the box. The software for my X6 does things that I didn't imagine using when I bought it.

Recommended.

Alan
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post #3 of 12
9/13/09 at 3:05pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ablevy View Post

I am planning to go with Netgear. I own one of the original Infrant (now Netgear) X6 NAS drives. The reason I will buy either the NVX or the Pro Pioneer is the support they have given me on what is almost a five year old product. All of the software upgrades to this point in the sparc series have supported my NAS. I can't think of another vendor who has done that. Heck I bought a dLink DSM-520 which while a pretty good media server, never got to version 2 of the software and never was able to meet all the claims on the box. The software for my X6 does things that I didn't imagine using when I bought it.

Recommended.

Alan

There are many reasons I would get either of the two I listed, but Netgear's support and abundance of software add-ons and upgrades is a big selling point. I do wish it supported full disk encryption like the Qnap and had a few other features of the Qnap, but I don't think those omissions outweigh the overall experience I think I would have with the Netgear.

Do you know how loud the Netgear and Qnap are?
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post #4 of 12
9/14/09 at 10:45am
The descriptions I've heard for the ReadyNas is you wouldn't mind having it in the office by the desk, but you wouldn't want it sitting by the TV. I haven't seen anyone measure the sound from these in any of the reviews.

Alan
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post #5 of 12
9/14/09 at 10:47am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ablevy View Post

The descriptions I've heard for the ReadyNas is you wouldn't mind having it in the office by the desk, but you wouldn't want it sitting by the TV. I haven't seen anyone measure the sound from these in any of the reviews.

Alan

In those SmallNetBuilder reviews, they say sound is low for the Qnap and medium for the Netgear but don't go into too much detail. Thanks for the response!
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post #6 of 12
9/14/09 at 12:22pm
Did you consider a HP Mediasmart? They have some advantages over the QNAP and ReadyNAS

They are cheap, Newegg has the HP487 with 1.5Tb storage for $500, vs $799 with no storage for the QNAP. I could not find a price on the ReadyNAS, but I think it will be close to the QNAP.

It comes with Apple time machine and media streaming software built in, no need to install anything.

It is basically a windows machine, and will run most windows apps. I run uTorrent, SmartServer, and Subversions on mine.

It is small and quiet. Not is quiet as I would like, but probably equivalent to the QNAP and ReadyNAS.
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post #7 of 12
9/14/09 at 12:40pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by malaugh View Post

Did you consider a HP Mediasmart? They have some advantages over the QNAP and ReadyNAS

They are cheap, Newegg has the HP487 with 1.5Tb storage for $500, vs $799 with no storage for the QNAP. I could not find a price on the ReadyNAS, but I think it will be close to the QNAP.

It comes with Apple time machine and media streaming software built in, no need to install anything.

It is basically a windows machine, and will run most windows apps. I run uTorrent, SmartServer, and Subversions on mine.

It is small and quiet. Not is quiet as I would like, but probably equivalent to the QNAP and ReadyNAS.

I had considered it but thought I'd be happier with true RAID implementations provided by a real NAS, but maybe that's not a big deal. Also, the QNAP and ReadyNAS sounded like they would play better with a Mac than the HP or Acer Home Server. But... I'll probably consider it again. I'm all over the place right now with what I want. :S
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post #8 of 12
9/14/09 at 12:58pm
I like the way the HP does file redundancy. They just copy the file twice, making sure the copies are on different disks. This has a number of advantages.

Each disk is a windows formatted disk, so if the server dies, you can plug the disk into any PC. I am not sure about file recovery with RAID, is it standardized, so you can take your RAID disks and plug them into another machine?

You can mix and match disks, they can be any size.

You can decide which files are duplicated, and which are only stored once, so you can trade off relaibility and storage capacity.

I am a PC guy, so I cannnot comment on how nice they play with MACs, there are a couple of SmartServer forums, I am sure they will have some answers.
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post #9 of 12
9/14/09 at 2:09pm
I have a Qnap509Pro at work and man, worth every penny. I had the netgear one for a while (older model, forget which) and i had a hell of a time getting it to play nice with 30 clients connecting to it. The upside of the Qnap is that it's a full-on PC under the hood. You can upgrade the CPU (standard core2duo) and ram (i've got 4gb in mine). This is for the 509pro though, not sure about the 4xx series.
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post #10 of 12
9/14/09 at 2:23pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by goobenet View Post

I have a Qnap509Pro at work and man, worth every penny. I had the netgear one for a while (older model, forget which) and i had a hell of a time getting it to play nice with 30 clients connecting to it. The upside of the Qnap is that it's a full-on PC under the hood. You can upgrade the CPU (standard core2duo) and ram (i've got 4gb in mine). This is for the 509pro though, not sure about the 4xx series.

The 4xx uses the Intel Atom, so I doubt it's as upgradable. I don't know about upgrading RAM. Would you say that you need quite a bit of *nix knowledge to really use the QNAP to its fullest, or is it pretty easy for the "regular" user?
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post #11 of 12
9/15/09 at 7:17am
Thread Starter 
This might be interesting.
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post #12 of 12
10/3/09 at 10:24am
just searched and happened to see this thread. I'm using QNAP's TS-639 Pro, it is quiet, power-saving & powerful. A lot of nice features.
Their GUI is also good after they upgraded their GUI design, you can visit their website and there you can see some video about that.
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