April 18, 2009Netgear Duo
A while back I wrote about a device called the Snap Server. It’s essentially a box with two hard drives inside and an ethernet port outside. It makes it really easy to add network storage.
Last week one of the drives failed to start up. The disks were fine, they just weren’t getting any power. Of course with any older hardware getting spare parts can be problematic. I finally tracked down the current owner of the technology (it had been sold a few times since I purchased the original units) and asked them for a quote on a replacement power supply.
They told me $135. 
I told them thanks, but no thanks.
Instead I purchased two brand new Netgear Duo boxes. This is a similar device except that’s it made for users to be able to swap drives in and out. The Snap had a sticker on it that voided your warranty if you opened the box and installed larger capacity hard drives without their permission, mainly because they wanted you to pay them for their (overpriced) larger drives. Netgear’s device is not only made to be updated / upgraded but the drives are hot-swap, so you can pull one out and plug in a new one at any time.
Cool stuff.
I purchased two Duo devices and four TB drives from Amazon and got a really good deal. I now have 2TB of backup storage (had one before) and the overall purchase for everything was less than what I paid for one of the Snap devices years ago.
As an added bonus, the Netgear devices are whisper quiet. I can actually hear myself think in my office now, which is a bit disconcerting. 