Update: 4 more people needed to qualify for the deal! We have 6 people signed up! The promotion ends on June 30.
I posted details of the ReadyNAS 600 Deal that’s going on right now for COBA members.
- $200 off the 1TB ReadyNAS with 4x250GB drives. You can specify WD, Hitachi, or Seagate brand drives
- $100 off the ReadyNAS without any drives. You supply your own SATA drives for the box
- $1895 for 1.6 TB ReadyNAS with 4x400GB drives.
If you are looking for a storage solution for your gigabytes of photos, videos, or files, you may want to consider the ReadyNAS. There’s a new review of the system on ExtremeTech. Check it out!
I’ve been using it to store my images for almost two months now, and the experience has been positive. I had one problem with AFP connections and Mac OS X, but Infrant’s engineers and support staff were extremely quick to respond and fix the problem.
Infrant Advantages
The ReadyNAS has been compared to the $999 BuffaloTech Terastation on sale at local Fry’s. Here are some points of differentiation between the two products.
Performance – By incorporating a 4 Channel SATA Controller and a Hardware RAID accelerator directly on the CPU, the ReadyNAS is up to 59% faster on writes and 102% faster on Reads. In comparison, the Terastation relies on IDE drives and Software RAID.
Serviceability – Not only do the Serial ATA drives offer better performance, but the availability of such drives in the next 5 years should facilitate replacement. IDE is an older technology, and many computer manufacturers have already started to migrate away from them. The ReadyNAS Chassis was designed to ease HDD installation and replacement; the Terastation was not (requires removal of 46 screws to replace one drive). Also, by storing the OS Image on compact flash, we enable replacement of the entire drive array at once. The Terastation OS resides on the HDD and does not allow all four drives to be replaced at once.
Interoperability – ReadyNAS offers NFS support for Linux and UNIX. HTTP support is also included allowing for easy and safe file sharing over the Internet as well as allowing you to easily set up an Intranet site out of a share.
Data Integrity – Infrant’s engineers come from an Enterprise NAS background and emphasize data integrity in all situations. User selectable options such as disabiling the HDD write cache, employing a FULL Data Journaling file system, and requiring hardware RAID, are all designed to eliminate potential RAID stripe issues and keep your data safe.
tow.com 
I might be interested in the deal. I am new to COBA though…
I am still not sure about the differences between this and the Buffalo (I mean, in 5 years god only knows where technology is going… based on this, is it really worth it paying the $200 extra?).
Ciao
I just posted some advantages the ReadyNAS has over the Terastation.
Adam,
I just signed up for the two COBA mailing lists last night. I’m interested in the ReadyNAS 600 deal, a few questions –
1. Should I consider waiting for X-Raid for ease of future expansion?
2. Western Digital drives have pretty poor reputation in general, are they standard drives from Infrant these days? If I ordered the diskless unit, how challenging is it to put in my own drives (250GB or 400GB) and have them up and running smoothly? Like you I’m very short on time.
3. Do you think that Infrant might consider adding the 1.6TB model into this deal?
Thanks.
Here’s what I got from Infrant:
1) Tough Question: X-RAID is nice, but it really won’t be available for a few months. The ReadyNAS 600 supports multiple volumes with varying RAID levels (0,1,5) whereas X-RAID DOES NOT; there is one volume with one RAID level (X-RAID, which is a modified RAID level). So depending on your time-frame and needs, its up to you.
2) WD was our initial drive partner… we have added 2 other manufacturers and have begun to ship their drives too (Seagate Barracudas and Hitachi Deskstars). As for popping in your own drives, if you have ever added a HDD to your computer, its just a bit easier. Only thing you must be aware of is the initial “formatting” or filesystem creation process. It is automatic the first time you power up the system after you install ALL the drives, but it can take up to 3 hours.