Hi Guys

Just to let you guys know that I now have my Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2 and have installed 2 x Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Hard Disks for data storage and backups.

The hardware is solidly built and oozes quality, this device is easy to set up and should cause no problems to those who can tell the back-end of a computer from the front. However, as a home user, speed is not an issue for me so for those where speed is important then I suggest using faster HDs, from Netgear's compatibility list, rather than the WD caviars to increase set-up times.

NB: My first HD took approx. 2 hours to set up, due to formatting, etc. and my second disk took 8 hours plus. This was due to formatting, syncing and then copying 0.4TB of data over from the first HD.

As for the controlling software, called "Dashboard", it is easy to use but as a GUI is awful to look at, it has grey text on black background, and is not user changeable. It's obvious that the techs that developed this GUI went some way to make it very user friendly but forgot that not everyone that buys this device are going to have 20/20 vision.

The firmware that controls the device is buggy, and the bug that catches you will depend on the equipment you use to communicate with the NAS. At the moment I am using my WinXP Pro SP3 PC to access, set-up users rights, create shares/folders and transfer data to and from the NAS, the only problem is that the user-rights do not work.

Consequently, I can set up a share/folder, transfer data to that share, set-up rights to include and/or exclude anyone from that particular share but the rights will either exclude everyone, including me, from the share's data or let everyone ihave access to that data, which is not what I want.

I currently have a pending help call with Netgear's Tech Support in order to solve this problem, personally I think that some sort of update or patch is required.

All in all, the ReadyNAS Duo is a solid piece of kit that works as a storage unit and, in the future, as a home media distribution centre. However, it is let down by the latest GUI and firmware, which may have been caused by time constraints, e.g release dates, rather than careless programming.



UK Bob