The hard reboot was bad enough but the subsequent media check meant the reboot time would stretch into hours before service was restored. Not exactly the kind of customer experience I was hoping for when I bought the device.

Things were getting so bad that I began researching a replacement device that I could purchase to replace the NetGear ReadyNAS. In the ReadyNAS Pro I have six 1.5 TB drives configured as a RAID 5 enclosure. That gives me 7.5TB of online storage.

I have been diligent in updating the firmware on the device and give it regular cleanings with compressed air so as far as I was concerned I was being diligent in managing the device. Despite my best efforts, the device continued to cause me problems.

After yet another hard re-boot my frustration level had reached new heights. I had about reached the end of my troubleshooting patience when for some reason I decided to change the configuration.

Up to this point I had configured the ReadyNAS Pro with two gigabit Ethernet connections directly to a Cisco switch. I seemed to remember that I added the second Ethernet connection just recently. I wondered if perhaps I had a bad cable.

I removed one gigabit connection and waited. After two weeks I did not have a single drop off by the device. I wondered if perhaps I had a bad cable. I swapped Ethernet cables and again left the device to run.

Another two weeks went by with no issues with the ReadyNAS device. It did not appear that the problem was cable since I had used two different cables. I decided to see if the problem was connecting both Ethernet ports. I plugged both cables into the device and restarted the ReadyNAS.

Within two hours the problem appeared and the device disconnected itself from the network requiring a hard boot. After several hours rebuilding and checking the drives the ReadyNAS was back on line.

This time I am using just a single Ethernet port on the ReadyNAS device. While I might theoretically only be getting half the throughput in this configuration it is a lot more stable and that is better than raw speed any day of the week.

I am able to access my files across my Ethernet network using a variety of clients including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Macintosh OS X, and Linux. It is hard to express how great this system has been.

Where I used to burn DVDs and shuttle USB drives from box to box in order to share data between computers now it is as simple as logging onto the ReadyNAS and accessing the information.

Not only is the information always available but it has given me the added benefit of being able to maintain one copy of the information instead of having multiple versions stored on various computers on the network.

The ReadyNAS has been so bulletproof that it has nearly become invisible. That is the greatest compliment a network device can receive. It works so well that people just forget it is even there. It is as reliable as turning on a light switch.

Of course making that statement I immediately jinxed myself to a life of dealing with problems that cannot be resolved. Such has become the case with the ReadyNAS Pro.

Recently the device downloaded a new version of the firmware and waited patiently for a reboot. The rain storm that blanketed Arizona last week offered the perfect opportunity to reboot. A power outage took down the entire network and I spent the better part of an evening recovering all the devices.

The ReadyNAS booted and went through a diagnostic check due to the power outage. On an array of six 1.5TB of data that can take a long time. When the system finally came up things seemed to be working.

The following day the ReadyNAS suddenly just stopped working. The blue power light on the front of the box was lit but the system was unresponsive. It required removing the power plug from the wall for a minute before the system would reset.

Upon restoring power it went through another system check taking over an hour to come up. Approximately two days later the same situation occurred with the ReadyNAS having to be powered off by removing the cord.

This has since happened six times in a week. My first inclination was the unsettled weather had caused some problems. In order to eliminate that, I bought an Uninterruptible Power System which I will review at a later date.

After installing the UPS the ReadyNAS seemed to be working and I thought the problem was resolved. Today the ReadyNAS again hung requiring yet another unplug and subsequent data check.

I began researching the problem and found I was not the only one having this problem. According to the support forums there are a number of Net Gear users having similar issues. So far the company has not found a solution.

Some are suggesting it is a configuration issue but that seems implausible given the number of people reporting the problem. Others are suggesting RAM but that too does not seem accurate since many of the people reporting this issue including myself have not upgraded or changed the factory memory.

For now I’ll continue to monitor the issue and in the mean time I will need to find a replacement NAS system that is more stable. I cannot afford to use this as a storage device if it continually fails. I’ll keep you posted as this progresses.

I have noticed that at each technology refresh junction the data storage needs have grown exponentially. Early on I could get away with a small hard drive that would store not only the operating system and programs but also all the data the user would need. As the kids have grown, their needs have changed and so has their appetite for storage.

During the last technology renewal I did for my daughter and my son, I ended up having to build computers with a terabyte of data to hold all of the information they deemed necessary for their survival. After all, how could they possibly be expected to live without their music, documents, pictures, and of course games?

I realized that this constant extension of personal storage space was getting expensive not to mention difficult to manage. Rather than continuing this trend where I installed larger and larger hard drives; I decided to take a different approach. I chose to create a NAS or Network Attached Storage unit.

In simple terms, this is a hard drive with a network connection that allows any computer on the network to access the hard drive for storage and retrieval. As I began researching NAS devices I quickly learned that there are several flavors from a single drive to an array of disks and each type has strengths and weaknesses.

I began by creating a list of needs I had for an NAS. The device must be capable of supporting Macintosh, Windows, and Linux since I have all three operating systems on the network. The NAS must be capable of password protecting data volumes to allow segregation of the data by user and maintain at least some privacy. It must also be fault tolerant since I didn’t want to spend a lot of time trying to recover from failures. Finally, and perhaps most importantly it must fit into the house.

This final criterion was a plea from my wife to please not turn our house into a computer data center. The last thing she wanted was a rack mounted unit in our living room. After all this was still a house and not a raised floor computer center (at least for the time being).

After doing a lot of research, I settled on the Netgear ReadyNAS Pro as the product of choice. The ReadyNAS pro is a network drive array with six bays for hard disks. The array can be separated into several partitions or it could be configured as a RAID to gain speed or fault tolerance.

Considering the amount of data this family was going through I chose to build a RAID 5 drive array that would utilize one disk for fault tolerance. Of course this meant that the overall capacity of the array would be the total of all disks minus one.

I ordered the ReadyNAS empty to populate it with my own drives. In a sad state of affairs I actually had six 1.5 terabyte drives lying around. Adding a drive to the ReadyNAS box is relatively simple. It has hot-swappable drive bays that allow you to slide in a new drive while the device is running.

Configuration of the ReadyNAS device is done through a combination of a small utility and a web page internal to the ReadyNAS. Set up can be accomplished from either a Macintosh or a Windows PC. I did not try Linux but since most of the configuration is via the web I would anticipate that you could set up from there as well.

The ReadyNAS has two gigabit Ethernet ports on the back and can manage the traffic through each port separately meaning you could theoretically get 2 gigabit/second. While I did not measure that specifically, I can attest that the access to this device is near instantaneous. The users were hard pressed to tell whether the device was local or remote on the network.

With six 1.5TB drives I had roughly 7.5TB of usable space. Creating volumes was fairly simple using the web interface. Likewise user creation was relatively straight forward allowing me to assign users and set space restrictions per user to help manage the data sprawl that some users on the network are guilty of.

The ReadyNAS has the ability to monitor environmental issues such as fans, state of each Ethernet port, and even whether an uninterruptable power supply is present. The device can be set to alarm if thresholds occur or hardware failures happen. These alarms include sending the error via email. I set this up to not only send email but to send notification to my iPhone so I am aware if there are issues with the device.

The ReadyNAS has not been in place for a couple of months and I have been impressed with the functionality of this device. By having this network appliance I am now able to manage the space for each user in a centralized manner without having to go from computer to computer.

While not every house needs a 7TB array, you can configure the device with as much data as you need and grow it as your requirements warrant the expansion. I definitely recommend the Netgear ReadyNAS, it’s a workhorse and just keeps working.