ReadyNAS 2304 (RR2304)

It was sure easy to install; install (4) 6Tb drives, bolt it to the rack, plug in the cables and power, and turn it on. Setup was reasonably easy, though it wants to set itself up as a X-drive system when I wanted 2 sets of raid 1 mirrored pairs, divided into volumes and folders for various backup jobs we needed. Deleting them is called destroy, and I was able to do the destroy and set up like I wanted easily. The instructions are very clear and easy to follow. The system has more options like bit-rot protection, managing LUMS (my first experience with them and there is darn near no clear info on what they are or why I would need them anywhere) and encryption. The web browser access is a little goofy, and it works with Chrome (IE gives you a splash screen but never loads) which is Ok, but it doesn't tell you that anywhere. It also works with MS Edge, the very first peripheral I ever found that does-Wow! It is also fast enough to stream videos, which is a bonus over our old NAS devices. It is even cloud compatible if you want everyone everywhere to have full access to your data. Copying 4Tb of data to it took about 8 hours, but that was from the old drives to the new one. From the server, it seems to be considerably faster, with 47Gb taking about an hour. I would definitely recommend it, and if we need more space, I would definitely get another of the same model if it is available. I would expect with 12 Tb, that might take a while, but as file sizes grow, space does fill up faster and faster.

What a great product, I must admit I have never been a fan boy of Netgear, but this unit is full of features. It has so far been reliable, a bit weird to setup mainly because I am a windows guy and not linux but it got around the drive security issues pretty fast. Setup is easy, throw a drive in and set it up from a web based screen, later on I will thrown in a few more of the same size, yes it will run fine with 1 drive in it. Tech support answered my questions within seconds before I bought this unit, I am very happy with it, serves my needs and more.

This replace 3 usb raid units. Bought 2 drives initially as and started as raid 1. Bought 2 more. X raid automatically added and changed to raid 5 with no issue and no data loss. Setting up shareable folders was easy with the app. Plan to buy another July 2022 update. Still going strong. I purchased a second and have increased drive sizes. Drive updates were easy doing them one drive at a time and allowing the NAS update the array before swapping out the next drive. No data loss and overall array size automatically increased. I don't remember if overall size increased after second or third drive was done.

I bought this and filled it with 8TB drives for a home lab. My biggest critique on this NAS is that it cannot be expanded to support additional drives or additional NICs. Setup was super easy out of the box, LACP setup was easy. During my testing, it detected a failed drive in about 20 seconds. When the drive was replaced, it automatically started to rebuild the array. I am using the X-Array feature which automates some array management. For a NAS with 4 bays, I think this is fine. It support NFS, CIFS/Samba, iSCSI, and many less popular protocols. It would be nice if I could have an S3 compatible interface as well, but that's ok. I haven't used the cloud sync options, but they seem comprehensive. All in all, I think this is comparable to a Synology at a cheaper price point.

Before I start, let me say that I am a professional IT specialist with almost 20 years of IT experience, who manages 3 FULL stacks at my job with multiple file servers (3 NAS, 2 DAS). I have had this "running" for 2 days and have already had to initiate support 3 tickets. I have yet to be able to even store any data on this NAS. Let me list the problems: 1) Netgear does not sell additional HDD Caddies. They refer you to 3rd party vendors selling used products. 2) Active Directory integration doesn't setup properly. 3) If you can successfully get AD integration to complete the setup stage, it doesn't work. Groups assigned to have full access have no access at all. 4) Following troubleshooting steps from Netgear will result in losing Admin access to the NAS with no ability to change settings. I followed Netgear support's instructions "to-the-letter" and now my NAS will not even factory reset. 5) The hot-swap functionality is limited to replacing failed drives ONLY. It is apparently impossible to set it up to allow for cold storage backups (this is the first "hot-swappable" NAS I have used with this limitation.) 6) The NAS reports that drives are failing even when the drive tests PERFECTLY through multiple other tests. Netgear's response was: "Sometimes the NAS will report that a drive is failing when the drive is fine" 7) Initial setup of the drives takes 6x longer than fully formatting the drives (one at a time) would take. (about 14 hours in my case). My suggestion as an IT professional? Find a different NAS to use. Better yet, find a different brand to use. DO NOT trust this device with any data you do not want to delete, assuming you can get it to work at all. Update: After 2 weeks of troubleshooting, a dozen or so emails, and 2 remote sessions, Netgear support has been unable to even determine why the NAS is not allowing authentication. I ended up refusing further assistance from Netgear since they are clueless. I had to tell support how to get to and change several settings in the web GUI. It was painful to watch them fumble through the interface to find basic settings and information (like how to give a group or user access permissions). I have now set it up as an iSCSI target. It works, but performance is lacking and in this configuration it can only serve 1 of the 3 purposes I originally intended to use it for. More than ever, I still recommend avoiding this product and company.

I lost a Netgear RN2120 during the Harvey Flood. Has water corrosion in PSU and System board. Salvaged 4 drives and inserter in the ReadyNAS RR2304. Booted up first time! The RR2304 is faster than the arm 2120 model. Excellent NAS, easy to use and fast for this price point NAS. Although I am a home/consultant user with limited network load I have used simulated loads to stress test and would not hesitate to use this unit in a small to medium business. Although I am versed in RAID management this unit has a X-RAID mode which auto selects the most appropriate RAID level for its disk configuration. Also facilitates incremental disk upgrades and hot swapping. Point being it is plug and play for the non technical individual / small business IT manager.

Bought this for an office of 2 seats. setup was short and sweet. bought it because it interfaces directly with amazon s3 buckets. It did everything it was advertised to do save the "high performance" it only has 2 GB of RAM and single core processor... so when it started performing the backups it slowed the file services to the clients to a crawl... to the point that it was unusable until we turned off the backups. spend the extra money and get the 3138.

A quick correction to a review below that claims this is a Marvell Armada CPU based NAS. While true of the 2120, the 2304 is completely different and based on an Intel Celeron. No, this is not a data center grade NAS, but is very well suited as a small business solution. I just migrated the disks from a ten year old Ultra 2 I had upgraded to OS6 and it went flawlessly. Try that with anybody else's product! While rack mountable it is still very compact with a 1U form factor and shallow depth of about one foot. The chassis is solid but not overly heavy. Absolutely silent with WD Red NAS disks. Very happy I was able to take advantage of year end pricing and got a GREAT deal.