No news is excellent news
by Volker Weber
It's been more than two weeks since I installed the Netgear ReadyNAS storage, and there is absolutely nothing to report. Zero. Nil. This thing works as advertised. It is way, way faster than the NSLU2 I used before. Stable, fast, invisible.
One thing to note: it's not quiet. You don't want it in your living room or your studio. It's bearable in an office environment, because its noise level is comparable to a PC. The machine sits about seven meters away from me, and I can hear it, unlike any other machine (Thinkpads, iMac, NSLU with two USB drives) in the office. I don't hear the disks but there is a constant hum from the fan milling at 2142 revs.
Two months from now the ReadyNAS will go into a rack in the basement and I won't even care whether it makes any sound at all. ;-)
Comments
I run the same model with 4 x 1.0TB drives.
After a full backup, I upgraded to the latest beta firmware which breaks that 2GB volume size limit.
It works very well, with no hiccups for me, even on the beta code.
http://www.infrant.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12447
I previously used a Buffalo Terastation. The Infrant is much more flexible, faster (hardware not software RAID) but a little noisier.
I love that ReadyNAS widget you got there. Mind to tell me where it originates from? Is there a Win32 version of that widget e.g. for konfabulator or the vista sidebar (argh)?
Sascha, as I've written here you'll find the Mac widget there ;) As for Windows / Konfabulator: Nope, there isn't one. Not that I would care, just thought I'd pass the info along.
Is it maybe possible to install a better fan, with less rpm, and especially less noise? Has someone done this already and his disks have survived?
Stefan, thank you alot ;-)
Dirk, technically there would no problem to install whatever silent or nearly noiseless fan available. I see the problem with "breaking up the case" and voiding any and all warranties that are on the device itself.
Okay breaking it up sounds a little bit violent ;)
Personally, given any choice between cool drives and silent operation I would always opt for the former.
The fan speed adjust based on room temperature, in a cold room it can't be heard over the air conditioner ;-)
Ben, I can assure you that in a warm (well, some would call it hot even) room it can't be heared over the sweet sound emanating from some quad cpu servers either ;)
