Netgear ReadyNAS 3130 review

Netgear’s 1U rack NAS teams up some interesting backup features with a boost in performance

IT Pro Verdict

The improved hardware in the ReadyNAS 3130 makes it much faster than previous models. Netgear’s block-level snapshots offer good data protection features and it’s not short on cloud apps either

Reasons to buy
  • +

    Much improved performance; Unlimited snapshots; Integrated cloud backup and file syncing

Reasons to avoid
  • -

    Still no expansion support; AV scanner hits backup performance

Dave Mitchell's avatar
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Installation got off to a good start as Netgear's ReadyCloud web portal discovered the appliance and offered to configure it for us. However, we came across an annoying glitch as the portal's last request before handing it over is for us to press the OK' or Backup' button.

Trouble is, the 3130 doesn't have these so the portal timed out waiting while we tried to find the buttons. The manual doesn't mention this so we asked Netgear which advised we should press the Reset button.

We dropped in four 4TB WD Red drives and let it create a single X-RAID2 array. These are the same as Synology's hybrid arrays which support a mix of different drive sizes and let you increase capacity by swapping out drives for larger ones in sequence.

A useful feature of the ReadyCloud portal is it allows registered appliances to be accessed remotely from anywhere. Users can also log in, view, add or delete files and folders and copy files directly from the desktop by dragging them into the Shares Browse page.

Netgear's ReadyOS admin interface is nicely designed and easy to use

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.

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