Netgear R7800 -> WD NAS or USB 3.0 HDD?

[Synomenon]

I have a Netgear R7800. Looking to add some storage to my network, but am unsure of which way to go.


I have the opportunity to pickup either a:

- WD My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 WDBWVZ0040JWT (4TB / 2x 2TB)
or
- 4TB WD Red + actively cooled USB3.0 enclosure


for the same price. Which solution would be better?

 

[pete y testing]

WD My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 WDBWVZ0040JWT

simple answer is anything with giga ethernet smashes usb 3 anyday

so get the wd

 

[TonyH]

simple answer is anything with giga ethernet smashes usb 3 anyday

so get the wd

Ditto. No brainer on this one.

 

[L&LD]

Agree with the posters above. But would also add that for the price of the WD, you can get a real NAS instead.

Synology or QNAP.

 

[Synomenon]

I need just a dual bay unit. What model(s) from Synology or QNap would you recommend? These NAS units look like regular "Folders" within Windows right? Can they be mapped to a drive letter as well? This needs to be easy to use since I have some older non-tech savvy people that will be using it (after I have set it up).

 

[L&LD]

Yes, they can be seen easily in Windows for non-tech people.

The TS-231 is a good 2Bay NAS. The TS-431 is an even better buy for not much more though (use as many drive bays, initially, as you need).

 

[Synomenon]

Looks like there's a TS-231+ as well. The place I have my gift card for though has only the WD model I listed above and the non+ TS-231. Is the non+ TS-231 still better than the WD?

 

[sfx2000]

The QNAP "+" variants were a big step on the CPU side...

 

[L&LD]

Looks like there's a TS-231+ as well. The place I have my gift card for though has only the WD model I listed above and the non+ TS-231. Is the non+ TS-231 still better than the WD?

Yes, the non '+' TS-231 is still better than the WD. With a NAS, (just like with our routers), it is not just hardware, but the os and firmware that makes or breaks how good a NAS is or not.

 

[Synomenon]

Awesome. Thanks everyone! Just ordered the TS-231.

 

[Synomenon]

Ok, so the TS-231 is back-ordered and looks like they completely removed its listing from their site. Only other thing they have is a WD EX2 Ultra. Looks better than the WD My Cloud Mirror so I just ordered the EX2 Ultra instead along with two 4TB WD Red hard drives.

 

[stevech]

Yes, the non '+' TS-231 is still better than the WD. With a NAS, (just like with our routers), it is not just hardware, but the os and firmware that makes or breaks how good a NAS is or not.

WD NASes are very strong on channel marketing. And not much else.

 

[Synomenon]

Ok so what about an eSATA hard drive connected to the R7800's eSATA port? I don't think eSATA has the same CPU overhead that USB 3.0 does.

 

[TonyH]

Ok so what about an eSATA hard drive connected to the R7800's eSATA port? I don't think eSATA has the same CPU overhead that USB 3.0 does.

Take a deep breath, plunge and buy a real NAS with which you can do lot more things. Go to Synology site and test drive DSM running on real NAS for an example..

 

[Synomenon]

So I have that WD EX2 Ultra now, but haven't opened it yet. If I get the QNAP or Synology, I'd have to get a router that supports link aggregation as I have been told on the Netgear section here that the R7800 doesn't have that feature.

Someone mentioned that it can be done with a switch of some sort, but I don't understand how that works if the router can't combine the speed / bandwidth of two ports into one port.

 

[L&LD]

Link aggregation doesn't do what you think it does. It will allow two devices to each reach the maximum 1GbE possible (around 115MB/s), but no single device will reach 2GbE, ever.

 

[Shabbir Rao]

I have a Netgear R7800. Looking to add some storage to my network, but am unsure of which way to go.


I have the opportunity to pickup either a:

- WD My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 WDBWVZ0040JWT (4TB / 2x 2TB)
or
- 4TB WD Red + actively cooled USB3.0 enclosure


for the same price. Which solution would be better?

My vote will go for the cloud because in cloud your data won't be lost so easily. Moreover I have been using NAS devices for my daily back up. And so far it is working very good for me. I am using both public and private cloud.

 

[L&LD]

My vote will go for the cloud because in cloud your data won't be lost so easily. Moreover I have been using NAS devices for my daily back up. And so far it is working very good for me. I am using both public and private cloud.

There is no 'cloud' option stated in the reply you quoted. NAS devices are what are being discussed.

Are you simply trying to bump your post count? Or, are you a very smart robot?

 

[LoneWolf]

As others have said, Synology or QNAP are your best bets. Western Digital has mediocre (at best) support for their NAS units.

I tend to work with Synology, and am happy. If all you need is storage, I'd look at the DS216j, which is an important step up from the base DS216se by having a much better processor. The DS216play has hardware video transcoding for some configurations (one step up) and steps after that increase processor (and in some cases, RAM). The Synology interface is easy to work with, and unlike Western Digital, you won't find software support is dropped relatively quickly.

 

[Synomenon]

Ok, so a bit of luck (maybe) here. One of my co-workers is offering me his used QNAP TS-453Mini for only $150. It looks like a much better model than anything I was previously looking at. I think I'll take him up on that since I'm still within the return period for this WD EX2 Ultra.