Add A Terabyte or Three With Infrant ReadyNAS 4-Drive SATA NAS

Home/Office Network Device Can Also Stream Media Directly

by Daniel P. Dern (dern@pair.com)

Vendor: Infrant Technologies
Product Names: ReadyNAS NV+, 1000S ($649/$849 diskless,
$2,999 with 4 750GB SATA drives)
Repertoire Media Server ($3,999 and $4,999)

Availability: Now
Product URL: http://infrant.com/products/products.php

Infrant Technologies' trio of four-bay ReadyNASs, demoed at the recent Ziff-Davis
Digital Life Expo in New York City, targets these anyone enough data and/or
needs to go beyond just an external hard drive or a two-drive NAS, ranging
from consumers wanting to stream media files without needing a computer on,
to digital-intensive professionals, SOHOs and even SMBs who want one-box RAID
storage of up to 1.5TB capacity.

The ReadyNAS NV+ desktop and the ReadyNAS 1000s 1u rackmount are
available either fully-populated with four 750GB SATA drives, or diskless --
you can start with two or even one drive, and hotswap add/upgrade as your
needs and budget permit -- simply pop open the door and slide them
in, no cabling needed, thankfully!

The fanlessRepertoire Digital Media Server comes with 500GB or 750GB Seagate
low-noise drives, quiet enough for your living room.

Infrant supports RAID 0, 1 and 5, and their proprietary X-RAID.
Gigabit Ethernet and UPnP support make ReadyNASs suitable for pushing
High-Def and other media content directly to digital media adapters,
and SlimServer devices like Logitech's Squeezebox
(http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html) and Transporter,
which push digital audio to a stereo. And you can add external USB
storage (though it won't be RAIDed).

The boxes have remarkably low power
consumption for a four-drive device -- less than 65 watts, about
half to a third of an Intel/AMD-based NAS, according to Infrant
-- and commensurately low heat, making the rackmount version a low-impact
addition to your computer room. For further power/cooling savings,
drives spin down when not in use, and the device can be set for
auto-shutdown/powerup.

Setting up the ReadyNAS is easy (you'll need a browser with JavaScript),
but configuring your computer firewall, sharing, etc. to see the network drive
may take experience beyond the casual home/home-office neophyte -- or a call
to tech support. (E.g., you need to tell XP to "mount" the network drive --
trivial only after you've done it at least once.)
Also, the admin program tends to hang all too easily,
forcing system reboots -- and Infrant seems to think you can't/shouldn't
run a firewall like ZoneAlarm on the PC.