Price : Too low to display
LG Electronics N2R1D Network Storage Server N2R1D 699
This review is from : Nas 2-BAY DVDrw Enclosure
Solid unit solid value . For years I had a cheap single-bay Simpleshare NAS and was constantly frustrated with the difficulty of sharing folders, adding USB storage, or anything above that required me to use the web based UI. The UI wasn't intuitive, and functionality was rarely functional.
This year, I spent a couple of months researching my next NAS, and settled on the LG-N2R1. I've had the LG-N2R1 for about a month now and I am happy to report that my experience thus far has exceeded expectations. I was looking for a cheap mirrored NAS, and I found an affordable, feature rich explosion of pure awesome.
The N2R1 auto-configures in minutes, and the web-based interface is very easy to access and customize. The UI is intuitive and responsive. I've set the box up as a 1TB RAID(0) array, I've set folder permissions, and created custom users and groups, all without having to read the instructions. I have no reservations recommending this model for it's ease of use, rich feature set and relatively low price-tag.
Note: The N2R1 is the enclosure ONLY.
I bought a pair of Seagate Barracudas, but I would recommend pairing this unit with any OTHER compatible drives.
I paired this thing with two 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives which I purchased separately.
Installing drives on this thing is ridiculously easy though, so just buy this model and get a couple of WD's on sale, and you should have the perfect home NAS.
::EDIT:: I was hearing a pulsing whine noise, which I at first thought was one of the Seagate drives, but with both drives removed, the pulsing continued. Since I don't see this complaint elsewhere I will assume that I just got a bad fan or something. Otherwise, zero complaints, this thing is awesome. I'll update if I learn more.
Solid unit solid value . For years I had a cheap single-bay Simpleshare NAS and was constantly frustrated with the difficulty of sharing folders, adding USB storage, or anything above that required me to use the web based UI. The UI wasn't intuitive, and functionality was rarely functional.
This year, I spent a couple of months researching my next NAS, and settled on the LG-N2R1. I've had the LG-N2R1 for about a month now and I am happy to report that my experience thus far has exceeded expectations. I was looking for a cheap mirrored NAS, and I found an affordable, feature rich explosion of pure awesome.
The N2R1 auto-configures in minutes, and the web-based interface is very easy to access and customize. The UI is intuitive and responsive. I've set the box up as a 1TB RAID(0) array, I've set folder permissions, and created custom users and groups, all without having to read the instructions. I have no reservations recommending this model for it's ease of use, rich feature set and relatively low price-tag.
Note: The N2R1 is the enclosure ONLY.
I bought a pair of Seagate Barracudas, but I would recommend pairing this unit with any OTHER compatible drives.
I paired this thing with two 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives which I purchased separately.
Installing drives on this thing is ridiculously easy though, so just buy this model and get a couple of WD's on sale, and you should have the perfect home NAS.
::EDIT:: I was hearing a pulsing whine noise, which I at first thought was one of the Seagate drives, but with both drives removed, the pulsing continued. Since I don't see this complaint elsewhere I will assume that I just got a bad fan or something. Otherwise, zero complaints, this thing is awesome. I'll update if I learn more.
Nas 2-BAY DVDrw Enclosure Reviews
Great item great price . I got one from a different reseller earlier this year. I pay about $240 for it. That was before I become an amazon customer. However this LG NAS is great. I bought 2 HDD 2TB drives for it and it gave me 4TB of space. I can manage the back up storage size by playing with the software it came with. Never lose any reports or files again. Right now I am using this device as my main storage in my house. Connecting all my computer and media players to it through network. I have my movie, ebooks and music store in this NAS and I can play them any time and from any where in or out side of my house. Love it~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Great item great price . I got one from a different reseller earlier this year. I pay about $240 for it. That was before I become an amazon customer. However this LG NAS is great. I bought 2 HDD 2TB drives for it and it gave me 4TB of space. I can manage the back up storage size by playing with the software it came with. Never lose any reports or files again. Right now I am using this device as my main storage in my house. Connecting all my computer and media players to it through network. I have my movie, ebooks and music store in this NAS and I can play them any time and from any where in or out side of my house. Love it~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nas 2-BAY DVDrw Enclosure Opinions
SILENT NAS . Decided on the DVD buring version, though if I were to do it again, I'd choose the model with the Blu Ray Drive Lg Nas 2 Bay with Bd-rw (hdd Not Included)Very quiet, very attractive. Plenty of ports and simple interface to navigate. The iTunes Server and Torrent clients are also very nice additions. Not sure how I lived without it! Used to have to wake up my office PC anytime I wanted to access a file or music from any other computer in the house. now, my primary PC can sleep and my software, pictures and music are accessible anywhere, anytime!
SILENT NAS . Decided on the DVD buring version, though if I were to do it again, I'd choose the model with the Blu Ray Drive Lg Nas 2 Bay with Bd-rw (hdd Not Included)Very quiet, very attractive. Plenty of ports and simple interface to navigate. The iTunes Server and Torrent clients are also very nice additions. Not sure how I lived without it! Used to have to wake up my office PC anytime I wanted to access a file or music from any other computer in the house. now, my primary PC can sleep and my software, pictures and music are accessible anywhere, anytime!
Great for someone new to Network Attached Storage . For many years I often shared folders on various Windows computers to send files across. I've been looking at a NAS for a while due to a NAS being easier to manage all my files. I eventually settled on this NAS simply because it has a simple system to use and also I liked the overall design. Because hard drives tend to get a much better warranty separately I bought the NAS without drives and put in my own 1TB Hitachi drives. Most of this review is done with the 2570 build, I recently upgraded the firmware just so I can add it to the initial review.
Before I begin, I want to point out that I do not and will not use my NAS or network shares as a source of backup. Anything important I tend to store on USB/Firewire hard drives that aren't always powered on or subjected to network access. So RAID and mirroring are off for now and probably will simply because I store my backups off the device. Also, in addition to the two hard drive bays there are USB ports, an eSATA port and SD card slot.
As for the good:
Trays: This could come as either a pro or con to some. The trays are easy to install and they do have a locking mechanism so it cannot be easily ejected. In order to eject the drive tray, make sure that the small lock switch is unlocked and the release mechanism is on the front of the tray. It looks more appealing than huge levers that are on the back of other NAS devices. On the other side it only comes with two so using a third drive will require removing a drive from the tray. Since I have no plans for it that is a non-issue. The big con is that unless there are drives less than 1TB most of the actual value of the NAS will NOT be protected with a Kensington lock.
Simple but reliable Operating System: I think this is slightly misleading but the actual 'firmware' of the router is installed to the hard drives in order to actually use the NAS. The software is mirrored however I don't intend on testing what happens if I put different settings on one drive to another. There are many features including Mediaserver (called DLNA in prior firmwares), email reports and also a Time Machine. I don't plan on using many of these services but they are there. Sharing folders is rather simple and only takes a few clicks. There is also a file viewer built into the NAS so I don't have to log into shares to alter them. My only complaint about it is that I can't get a full S.M.A.R.T. analysis from this device. The only codes that are available is on the diagnostic page in the NAS which needs to be checked alongside LG the Knowledge Base.
Fan: On the back of the NAS there is a nice sized 80mm fan keeping the hard drives cool. It only powers up when the hard drives are running.
The OLED display: A small display that does give an indication of what is going on. When formatting, updating firmware or other things it'll display what the NAS is doing. On the top part of the display are 5 icons. Network, User logged into shares, disc inserted, USB device inserted and volume is online. The network and volume are more of a simple diagnostic to tell if there is a network connection and if the hard drive volumes are accessible. There are also a few options on the display that can be accessed using the buttons on the NAS such as hard drive capacity (averaged between both drives), changing IP address and a few other things.
DVD Drive: With the exception of the Blu-Ray version this is one that probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to backup the entire NAS. I don't plan on doing that, but I use it to supplement laptops and other devices that do not have DVD burners. It can either be set up to be used within the web interface or as an iSCSI device.
Firmware: Updating the firmware is quick and easy. Where I think another person had issues is that the NAS only has 1024Mb (or 128MB) of RAM. It's impossible to load a 100MB firmware into 128MB of space so more than likely it is applied to the volumes of the drive to install. So essentially at least 100MB needs to be free to install it. I didn't notice any loss of data after the firmware was installed but it did take a little longer to reboot. I'm assuming for now that the actual flash chip is not touched and if I take the drives out and erase then the NAS will be bumped down to the original firmware. That assumption I'll leave as a huge plus because the biggest reason my routers fail is due irreversible corruption to the flash.
Overall the NAS does what I need it to do reliably. There are a few faults though that reduce my rating to four stars. USB and SD card slots are meant for backup only while the eSATA port I don't see on using at all.
Web browser dependence: Not sure how to word this, but being my first NAS I do not know if other NAS devices are subject to this condition. Essentially when running certain functions of the NAS via the web browser the page has to be open and the network connection has to remain online. Loosely, it means it can't be set and the browser closed. I've had three incidents, one tested and two accidental that might make it clearer.
1 - My router crashed while I was formatting the drives. It happened to be at 98% on drive 2 and never updated to 99% until completed. Since there wasn't anything that happens after it completed successfully.
2 - The burner app within the NAS pops up in a browser window. If the pop-up isn't taken care of the NAS will remain paused. Once the pop-up is loaded then the drive can begin burning. Otherwise if it is never taken care of the NAS will reserve resources to the burner and will remain extremely slow until reboot.
3 - This one was intentional as I wanted to reinitialize the NAS and update the firmware on my new router (that I got a month after the NAS since the old one died) at the same time. The NAS initialized properly but did not receive the command to reboot. Since the admin credentials were changed neither would work and I had to reboot the NAS manually (it'll be explained later on).
Shutdown: Another interesting issue I've found is that the NAS has three shutdown options which are shutdown, reboot and hibernate. Where this makes it a con is that the options you get on the NAS buttons is slightly different than that of the web interface.
Buttons - I can shutdown and put the NAS into hibernation but I cannot reboot. I can return the NAS from hibernation by pressing a button. Essentially I can use the hibernation as a makeshift reboot as that is what the NAS does to return from hibernation.
Interface - I can shutdown and reboot the NAS but I cannot put it into immediate hibernation. In this case I can only get the NAS out of hibernation by using the admin credentials. There is the option to put hibernation at certain times from the web browser which I don't use.
Standby: The final issue that I came across which does hurt the NAS is that everything requires the hard drives spinning. So logging into a network share with drives spun down results in it not being available for about fifteen seconds until the drives are up. It removes the ability to use network mapping but I hope it might be fixed in a later firmware.
Other than that there are a few little other quirks I've seen but I'll look into it while I'm adjusting with the new firmware. I'll add that the only way I know of to log out of shares while the computer is running and without the usage of network mapping is to use the net use command. On Pocket PCs, which the NAS isn't 100% compatible with on 2570 (haven't had any issues on the latest firmware 2642...yet) I've noticed that simply closing file explorer or turning it off will clear out the log in.
To end this most of what supplements this NAS, including the compatibility lists, are going to be on the LG Knowledge Base. The hard drives I used are not on this list but I'm just playing by the assumption that Hitachi drives are used in the disk models (as opposed to disk less I guess) that there wouldn't be any issues and so far there isn't.
Before I begin, I want to point out that I do not and will not use my NAS or network shares as a source of backup. Anything important I tend to store on USB/Firewire hard drives that aren't always powered on or subjected to network access. So RAID and mirroring are off for now and probably will simply because I store my backups off the device. Also, in addition to the two hard drive bays there are USB ports, an eSATA port and SD card slot.
As for the good:
Trays: This could come as either a pro or con to some. The trays are easy to install and they do have a locking mechanism so it cannot be easily ejected. In order to eject the drive tray, make sure that the small lock switch is unlocked and the release mechanism is on the front of the tray. It looks more appealing than huge levers that are on the back of other NAS devices. On the other side it only comes with two so using a third drive will require removing a drive from the tray. Since I have no plans for it that is a non-issue. The big con is that unless there are drives less than 1TB most of the actual value of the NAS will NOT be protected with a Kensington lock.
Simple but reliable Operating System: I think this is slightly misleading but the actual 'firmware' of the router is installed to the hard drives in order to actually use the NAS. The software is mirrored however I don't intend on testing what happens if I put different settings on one drive to another. There are many features including Mediaserver (called DLNA in prior firmwares), email reports and also a Time Machine. I don't plan on using many of these services but they are there. Sharing folders is rather simple and only takes a few clicks. There is also a file viewer built into the NAS so I don't have to log into shares to alter them. My only complaint about it is that I can't get a full S.M.A.R.T. analysis from this device. The only codes that are available is on the diagnostic page in the NAS which needs to be checked alongside LG the Knowledge Base.
Fan: On the back of the NAS there is a nice sized 80mm fan keeping the hard drives cool. It only powers up when the hard drives are running.
The OLED display: A small display that does give an indication of what is going on. When formatting, updating firmware or other things it'll display what the NAS is doing. On the top part of the display are 5 icons. Network, User logged into shares, disc inserted, USB device inserted and volume is online. The network and volume are more of a simple diagnostic to tell if there is a network connection and if the hard drive volumes are accessible. There are also a few options on the display that can be accessed using the buttons on the NAS such as hard drive capacity (averaged between both drives), changing IP address and a few other things.
DVD Drive: With the exception of the Blu-Ray version this is one that probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to backup the entire NAS. I don't plan on doing that, but I use it to supplement laptops and other devices that do not have DVD burners. It can either be set up to be used within the web interface or as an iSCSI device.
Firmware: Updating the firmware is quick and easy. Where I think another person had issues is that the NAS only has 1024Mb (or 128MB) of RAM. It's impossible to load a 100MB firmware into 128MB of space so more than likely it is applied to the volumes of the drive to install. So essentially at least 100MB needs to be free to install it. I didn't notice any loss of data after the firmware was installed but it did take a little longer to reboot. I'm assuming for now that the actual flash chip is not touched and if I take the drives out and erase then the NAS will be bumped down to the original firmware. That assumption I'll leave as a huge plus because the biggest reason my routers fail is due irreversible corruption to the flash.
Overall the NAS does what I need it to do reliably. There are a few faults though that reduce my rating to four stars. USB and SD card slots are meant for backup only while the eSATA port I don't see on using at all.
Web browser dependence: Not sure how to word this, but being my first NAS I do not know if other NAS devices are subject to this condition. Essentially when running certain functions of the NAS via the web browser the page has to be open and the network connection has to remain online. Loosely, it means it can't be set and the browser closed. I've had three incidents, one tested and two accidental that might make it clearer.
1 - My router crashed while I was formatting the drives. It happened to be at 98% on drive 2 and never updated to 99% until completed. Since there wasn't anything that happens after it completed successfully.
2 - The burner app within the NAS pops up in a browser window. If the pop-up isn't taken care of the NAS will remain paused. Once the pop-up is loaded then the drive can begin burning. Otherwise if it is never taken care of the NAS will reserve resources to the burner and will remain extremely slow until reboot.
3 - This one was intentional as I wanted to reinitialize the NAS and update the firmware on my new router (that I got a month after the NAS since the old one died) at the same time. The NAS initialized properly but did not receive the command to reboot. Since the admin credentials were changed neither would work and I had to reboot the NAS manually (it'll be explained later on).
Shutdown: Another interesting issue I've found is that the NAS has three shutdown options which are shutdown, reboot and hibernate. Where this makes it a con is that the options you get on the NAS buttons is slightly different than that of the web interface.
Buttons - I can shutdown and put the NAS into hibernation but I cannot reboot. I can return the NAS from hibernation by pressing a button. Essentially I can use the hibernation as a makeshift reboot as that is what the NAS does to return from hibernation.
Interface - I can shutdown and reboot the NAS but I cannot put it into immediate hibernation. In this case I can only get the NAS out of hibernation by using the admin credentials. There is the option to put hibernation at certain times from the web browser which I don't use.
Standby: The final issue that I came across which does hurt the NAS is that everything requires the hard drives spinning. So logging into a network share with drives spun down results in it not being available for about fifteen seconds until the drives are up. It removes the ability to use network mapping but I hope it might be fixed in a later firmware.
Other than that there are a few little other quirks I've seen but I'll look into it while I'm adjusting with the new firmware. I'll add that the only way I know of to log out of shares while the computer is running and without the usage of network mapping is to use the net use command. On Pocket PCs, which the NAS isn't 100% compatible with on 2570 (haven't had any issues on the latest firmware 2642...yet) I've noticed that simply closing file explorer or turning it off will clear out the log in.
To end this most of what supplements this NAS, including the compatibility lists, are going to be on the LG Knowledge Base. The hard drives I used are not on this list but I'm just playing by the assumption that Hitachi drives are used in the disk models (as opposed to disk less I guess) that there wouldn't be any issues and so far there isn't.
so so . first experience -- NICE package and easy to use
+) manually added TWO 2TB drives ==> okay !!
+) They CLAIM GB Ethernet -- I'll have to upgrade my router to test the performance
+) initially I was disappointed with the nois -- FORTUNATELY this settled into a reasonably quite mode after a while. HDs also power down to reduce noise
HOWEVER
-) FLASH as a requirement to edit the settings in an embedded NAS server like this IS NOT ACCEPTABLE !! Not everyone is using FLASH and to make those few simple settings, a clean HTML interface is more than sufficient !!
-) NON-STANDARD HD-FORMAT. Be it regular or RAID, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to recover data. They are using Linux but not a Linux-compatible disc image. The main filesystem is Linux but likely with some offset and other proprietary info in the boot sector ==> BACKUP & RESTORE PROBLEM in case this unit fails
-) I want to swap drive but I cannot find anyone selling extra HD holders for this ==> so I always have unscrew the old, mount the new drive instead of plug & play with (multiple) drives & extra drive holders
-) NONE of my Windows programs recognize the drive as a WRITER -- they can can read WITH LIMITATIONS. EAC and other utilities fail to access the drive's details and cannot perform read-error corrections and other advanced features :-((
-) if you have a laptop and want to rip your old CDs into MP3s ==> buy a USB CD/DVD instead. This one won't work.
-) From a NAS server, I was expecting a few more advanced features -- like LOCAL copy data from drive A to drive B. Instead all copy goes via (slow) network back & forth to the PC
-) From a NAS server I was expecting a few more advanced features -- BACKUP !! For heaven's sake, there are 4 TERABYTE of data and they sure need backup. At least some DISC-CLONING would be useful. And support for external (USB2/USB3/eSATA/FIREWIRE) HD using STANDARD (Linux) file-system
-) my POWER-DVD doesn't recognize this as a valid drive ==> no DVD playback on my laptop. THIS DEFEATS THE PURPOSE of having a NAS server with CD/DVD.
-) CANT use it to convert CD to MP3, can't watch DVDs ==> FAIL !!
-) I like that embedded CARD READER ==> but it failed to show as a network drive !! Seems it only can copy data to the local disc :-((
I know this is a "cheap" 170USD device -- but most of my complaints would have been easy to fix at no or little extra costs. They use freeware SW, so why not add a suitable Linux backup SW ??
Despite the frustration, I kept this model :
+ it is CHEAP and I have a DESKTOP with CD/DVD to make up for some of the LG N2R1's problems
+ it is a compact unit giving me 4TB of network storage
+ I intend it to be a BACKUP system (mostly offline), so the slow performance is less of a problem
+) manually added TWO 2TB drives ==> okay !!
+) They CLAIM GB Ethernet -- I'll have to upgrade my router to test the performance
+) initially I was disappointed with the nois -- FORTUNATELY this settled into a reasonably quite mode after a while. HDs also power down to reduce noise
HOWEVER
-) FLASH as a requirement to edit the settings in an embedded NAS server like this IS NOT ACCEPTABLE !! Not everyone is using FLASH and to make those few simple settings, a clean HTML interface is more than sufficient !!
-) NON-STANDARD HD-FORMAT. Be it regular or RAID, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to recover data. They are using Linux but not a Linux-compatible disc image. The main filesystem is Linux but likely with some offset and other proprietary info in the boot sector ==> BACKUP & RESTORE PROBLEM in case this unit fails
-) I want to swap drive but I cannot find anyone selling extra HD holders for this ==> so I always have unscrew the old, mount the new drive instead of plug & play with (multiple) drives & extra drive holders
-) NONE of my Windows programs recognize the drive as a WRITER -- they can can read WITH LIMITATIONS. EAC and other utilities fail to access the drive's details and cannot perform read-error corrections and other advanced features :-((
-) if you have a laptop and want to rip your old CDs into MP3s ==> buy a USB CD/DVD instead. This one won't work.
-) From a NAS server, I was expecting a few more advanced features -- like LOCAL copy data from drive A to drive B. Instead all copy goes via (slow) network back & forth to the PC
-) From a NAS server I was expecting a few more advanced features -- BACKUP !! For heaven's sake, there are 4 TERABYTE of data and they sure need backup. At least some DISC-CLONING would be useful. And support for external (USB2/USB3/eSATA/FIREWIRE) HD using STANDARD (Linux) file-system
-) my POWER-DVD doesn't recognize this as a valid drive ==> no DVD playback on my laptop. THIS DEFEATS THE PURPOSE of having a NAS server with CD/DVD.
-) CANT use it to convert CD to MP3, can't watch DVDs ==> FAIL !!
-) I like that embedded CARD READER ==> but it failed to show as a network drive !! Seems it only can copy data to the local disc :-((
I know this is a "cheap" 170USD device -- but most of my complaints would have been easy to fix at no or little extra costs. They use freeware SW, so why not add a suitable Linux backup SW ??
Despite the frustration, I kept this model :
+ it is CHEAP and I have a DESKTOP with CD/DVD to make up for some of the LG N2R1's problems
+ it is a compact unit giving me 4TB of network storage
+ I intend it to be a BACKUP system (mostly offline), so the slow performance is less of a problem
Cons Review
Not real impressed! . I own 2 of these units for file storage and backups all PC based for me and my girlfriend. We also invested in a Macbook Air each and wondered why we couldn't connect to the LG-NAS. Come to find out that Mac's and LG-NAS won't talk to each other! Not a good thing. So is LG going to do an upgrade to the firmware to fix this issue! After doing some research.. NOPE! Also there as an issue where one of the LG-NAS units would drop off line from the network constantly. Did some more research and upgraded the firmware. That did the trick. I do like the software that was included with the NAS units. NAS Detector and NAS monitor. As a part time IT, I'm not real impressed with this unit. A majority of my hardware is Netgear based. Should have stuck with the Netgear NAS units. See what happens when you try to save a couple of bucks! You get what you pay for.
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Product Details
EAN : 0058231293685UPC : 058231293685
MPN : N2R1D
Brand : LG
Weight : 12 pounds
Height : 11 inches
Length : 13 inches
Width : 12 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Manufacturer : LG
Model : N2R1D
Platform : Windows 2003 Server
Publisher : LG
SKU : DHN2R1D
Studio : LG
Where To Buy
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