Features
The ReadyNAS has a good balance of features that make it an ideal choice for business and entertainment. Like most NASes, it not only streams to DLNA devices, but also has special support for TiVOs, as well as Orb Mobile streaming. Orb is a freeware streaming software that enables users to remotely access personal digital content on laptops, smartphones, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. You can sign up for the Orb service right through the FrontView interface. Once you're signed in, a default media folder gets added to the ReadyNAS' library. Other multimedia options include support for Squeezebox digital music players and iTunes.

On the business side, the Ultra 6 has Netgear's X-RAID2 auto expansion technology for adding capacity. Administrators can easily create users (or import them via a .CSV file) as well as groups and folder shares, and apply permissions to those shares for users and groups. ReadyNAS Remote Access is built-in for remotely connecting to data. Data support is flexible, as the NAS can work with several file sharing protocols: CIFS, NSF, AFP and FTP. It also works with clients running Bonjour—Apple's service discovery protocol that locates devices on a network.

There's no additional file manager within the FrontView interface. Many other NASes like LG's N1T1 (which uses ajaXplorer) have them. I often find in testing that third-party file browsers can slow down file uploads and downloads so I think it's not such a big deal that Netgear eschews an additional File Manager. ReadyNAS owners can just use RAIDar to access and browse the shares on the NAS or can just use mapped drives.

Performance
I was impressed with the ReadyNAS' performance. Testing Read speeds to the NAS from a laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor and 2GB RAM, averaged 28 MBps. Writes averaged 25 MBps. These scores bested our previous Editors' Choice winner, the Synology DS1010+, which had a commendable Read speed of 25 MBps.

Backup
There are a couple of backup options available. You can opt to back up to an external USB drive with a touch of the "backup" button on the front of chassis. Businesses with mission-critical data may want to investigate another option, ReadyNAS Vault. This is an optional cloud backup solution that can be enabled in the FrontView console. With the ReadyNAS vault you get robust backup options including encryption, deduplication, and control over how much bandwidth is used for your backup job. For admins who find ReadyNAS Vault eats too much bandwidth on a network, it's really simple to disable the service and delete your account. The service is free to try for 30 days and then pricing varies depending on the level of service; Netgear offers 50GB of storage for $199 per year; 10GB for $349 per year and other packages as well.

You don't have to pay to have a decent backup solution, though. The native backup on the NAS works fine, although you don't get all of the enterprise features as with ReadyNAS Vault. I was able to backup shared folders on a remote server to the NAS quite easily and was able to schedule that backup job. You can also opt to backup the NAS to a remote destination; but you can't define a job where both the backup source and destination are remote locations.

ReadyNAS Recovery
ReadyNAS' backup is impressive, but what really blew me away was the simple drive-recovery process. With the NAS still running, I pulled a drive out of bay 5. I got on screen the error message: "Disk failure detected" with the date and time I pulled the drive. I also received the notification "Disk 2 failed" on the LCD and was informed that Drive C was unprotected. On screen, I got another message recommending that I replace the failed disk as soon as possible. Since I had setup e-mail notification, I also received a message about disk failure and that drive removal was detected. I replaced the pulled drive with another 1TB drive. After a few seconds the LCD displayed a series of statuses; "Testing Drive 2," "Disk 2 passed," and, finally, "Resync C" (Resync is a part of Netgear's proprietary RAID volume technology). Meanwhile, FrontView displayed the popup message, "New disk detected." If multiple disks have been added they will be processed one at a time. The software that showed that "Data volume will be rebuilt with disk 2."

After an hour, the Resync was at 30%. Sure enough, in about three hours, my RAID volume had been recovered and my data was intact. Of course, I have very little data on the drives, so expect ReadyNAS' used in live, production environments too have longer recovery times. Know what? That's OK, as long as the data is saved.

I performed the same test on another NAS that boasts hot-swap capability, QNAP's TS-459. The TS-459 did not rebuild the RAID 5 array that had been configured and worse, I had a persistent disk error on the LED. ReadyNAS's performance make it a good choice for a key element in a disaster recovery plan.

Interface Oddities
As mentioned, I ran into a bit of quirkiness in the interface during my testing. The status of the NAS would periodically show up as "offline" although it wasn't. Also, there's an area of the interface that lets you locate the drives within the bays. It does this by flashing an LED on the ReadyNAS that's on or near the bay that's housing the drive you are trying to find. The problem is, there are no LEDs anywhere near the drive bays on the chassis, so even though I received the message, "Blinking disk lcd1," nothing happened.

I attribute these quirks to the fact that Netgear tends to run the same FrontView interface across all of its lines of NASes—so one NAS may have features that another one doesn't.

Should You Get Ready for ReadyNAS?
The ReadyNAS Ultra 6 is pricy, but it's worth the price. It may perhaps be overkill for the average home user, but anyone with a lot of highly-prized data would find it a gem of a NAS. The interface has enough enterprise features for a business, but it's also quite user-friendly and easy to walk through. Although I ran into the occasional quirk and had an early firmware problem, this is an excellent NAS for the SMB.

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