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

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The 3130 is much faster than its predecessor with drag and drop copies of a 50GB file to a share returning read and write speeds of 113MB/sec and 112MB/sec. In the same test, the 2120 mustered only 95MB/sec and 65MB/sec.

We tested maximum performance with four Xeon E5-2600 v3 servers each mapped to their own share over a dedicated Gigabit link. With Iometer running on each server, we saw good cumulative raw read and write rates of 430MB/sec and 260MB/sec.

It also handled our backup test much better with our 22.4GB folder and its 10,500 small files copied at a rate of 87MB/sec the 2120 only managed 33MB/sec. Netgear's real-time anti-virus scanner is still an issue although the Atom CPU handled its demands better.

With the AV scanning enabled, the same backup job averaged 30MB/sec. Not great but far better than the 2120 which struggled to reach a paltry 8.3MB/sec.

Regular snapshot protection can be specified during share and LUN creation

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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