I was recently given a whole bunch of hard drives that have been smashed. Among the things given was this four bay NetGear Cloud storage device. It has four bays for hard drives, three USB ports, what looks like two ether net ports, a power button and a backup button. I don't know if it works. If it works - I probably don't know the password for it.

What I'd like to do is get some big hard drives (storage wise) and set this up as a backup for my security camera system. Like I said this is probably way over my head, but I'd like to set it up and use it when I want to back up video. I can always pull the hard drive and take it to the local police department and allow them to view the video captured. That would be a whole lot easier than trying to download videos to a thumb drive (USB) and move it to either my computer or the local authorities computers.

Can anyone help me? Advise me? Should I give up now or make a stab at it?

Here's the user manual I've found on line. https://www.manualsearcher.com/netgear/readynas-nvx/manual

 

Administrators - please relocate this thread in the proper place. Thank you.

 

Those were pretty cool devices of their day, I browsed the manual looking for capacity when I did fine this:

Storage

Total installed storage capacity	2
Number of storage drives installed	2
Storage drive capacity	1000GB

So what I read here and I may be wrong is your maximum capacity is 1,000 Giga Byte or 1 Tera Byte. While an incredible storage capacity years ago really not very much by today's standards, especially when looking to store video files. The box does offer RAID (Redundant Array Independent Drives) which is a fancy way of saying the data is duplicated. Most home computers today have that feature on the motherboards at setup before the OS is installed from the BIOS settings. Today a single 2 TB HDD is not at all unusual and is common place. Most common home computers allow multiple drives and adding a drive for increased capacity is easily done. I can also buy a 5 Tera Byte external Hard Disk Drive for just over $100 USD.

The problem is what you have was a great NAS box for its day but days seem to pass quickly. Today's latest and greatest is tomorrow's old junk. The box you have, in its day was really the cat's meow but today for video storage? Not so great. I would just add a 2 TB HDD to your system and use backup software to backup any video data you want to backup on a regular basis.

Ron

 

Thanks Ron. Maybe I'll pull the power supply. Don't know what for - I have so many darn +5 & +12V supplies. But I thought I read somewhere that the storage capacity could be upgraded by installing larger drives. But if the max is 1TB then it's not so fancy a device any longer.

Again, thanks.

 

Thanks Ron. Maybe I'll pull the power supply. Don't know what for - I have so many darn +5 & +12V supplies. But I thought I read somewhere that the storage capacity could be upgraded by installing larger drives. But if the max is 1TB then it's not so fancy a device any longer.

Again, thanks.

The max capacity was just my read. Maybe it was last year my wife's computer died with a motherboard failure. I am guessing that system ran 5 years and around here they never get shut down. So I went to my local Micro Center and was like wow. Just plain wow. The 2 TB hard drives were the norm and I picked up a nice solid state drive 1 TB for her OS and program files and 4 2 TB standard 7200 RPM drives for her mass storage. Heck a 1 TB solid sate drive was about $130 and the 2 TB drives were about $50 each for Segate Baracuda. I remember paying $259 for an external Western Digital 500 GB drive maybe 10 years ago.

Tony if you have a large cap drive laying around you have nothing to lose by trying and seeing if it recognizes a high cap drive. Nothing to lose. Those old NAS boxes were really cool in their day.

Ron

 

Specs:

Total installed storage capacity	2
Number of storage drives installed	2

Storage drive capacity	1000GB
RAID levels	0, 1, 5
Storage drive interface	Serial ATA II

So, max of 2 TB. max of 1 TB drives. RAID always gives you less. A fiiend just installed a 25 TB RAID server.

Remember that there are "server rated" hard drives.

 

Well perhaps I'd like to try it. I DO have a bunch of SATA HD's laying around. Populating it with 750 Gig drives will still serve to hold enough video files. It's not like I want to retain every video ever shot by my security cameras, just important ones. There's a family that moved in a year and a half ago, just across the street. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday they have tons of cars coming and going. Nearly all of the drivers, or those who enter the house, are heavy set women carrying a sack of clothing, spend anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, then return to their cars with their sacks of clothing.

One of my neighbors said the people have a photo studio in the basement and they shoot "Adult" pictures. If that's true, and evidence tends to support that hypothesis, then that may be the reason for all the heavy women. What I've ben calling "Piggy Porn". But I suppose there are people who like that body style. Not me - but I'm not the author of all likes and dislikes.

Anyway, I'd like to see if I can hook this thing up. As I said from the get-go, this is probably way over my head. So I turn to some advice. Maybe someone here could walk me through it.

 

Go for it. The manual should cover the drive configurations, like RAID 1, RAID 2 and so forth. Setup seemed well covered in what I read of the manual. Share how things work out and those 750 GB drives are plenty to see what you get.

Ron

 

The first problem I expect to encounter is how to connect it to the DVR. (DVR Security Camera system). Neither the DVR or the NetGear have what I see as traditional computer connections. This is just the beginnings of all I don't understand about this. Can I get a USB to USB cable? Will I need to modify a cable? If so - how? I just don't see any off the shelf solution other than the ethernet cable, and I have no more experience with ethernet other than plugging it into the back of the computer and then plugging it into the modem/router.

 

Tony, I may be wring but my first read on that box and other NAS boxes I used years ago was they normally have one or two Ethernet connections. Tyey are typically connected to a router. Keep in mind these were popular before wireless was common like it is today. In the NAS box setup you can let your router assign an IP address to the box or assign the box an IP address. I liked to setup an IP address simply so it would not change when things rebooted. Also years ago the ethernet cable used was a "crossover" cable but todays routers and computers do fine figuring out TX and RX. So if you have a router with wired ports just use an ethernet cable to connect NAS box to your router. Then go into your router and make sure the NAS box shows up. It will be something like an address of 192.168.1.XX whatever you assign it or the router assigns it. Now your NAS box is a mass storage location on your network. Type the address into any browser and you should see the box. This is all much simpler than it sounds.

Ron

 

I'm sure it's simple. Like simple to rebuild a transmission when you've been doing it for years. But your first transmission (without training) would be a daunting task. But I'll get around to giving that a try in a few months. Reason for waiting is because I'm putting a second floor above the garage. There's going to be an additional router/modem in that location. So when I do that I'll go ahead and make that connection. As for the current router/modem, it's not in a convenient place. And messing with it can easily upset the wife. Happy wife - happy life.

 

When you get to it let us know how it goes. Really matters not where you put it as long as it's wired to the router. That done access your data from anywhere you access your home network.

Ron

 

To be honest I had no idea I'd be hooking it to the internet. Wouldn't I have to worry about security? Someone hacking in? Shouldn't there be a firewall or something? I ask because I honestly have no idea. Just wild speculation.

 

No, because you are behind your router. It will only show on your home network. No connection to the outside world. This is why the IP address will be something like 192.168.0.xxx. Here is an example of what my router is doing about now.



Notice all of the 192.168 addresses. Those are locally assigned IP addresses behind my router, they are part of our home private network. Note there are expiration dates and times. Really matters not because when one expires the router just issues another and you never know about it. With a NAT box I suggest rather than a dynamic IP address you suggest a Fixed address so your data is always in the same place. Then save that address in your browser much like you save any internet address placing it in your favorites. Anyway, no, your data is behind your firewall and only available to you.

The idea of a NAT box is a central mass storage location sort of like a server in a small company. Using a NAT box I place data out there making available to my employees but only on my small business network so it is available only in-house. Today companies have clouds and manage data off site all password protected and in some cases encrypted. Years ago the NAT box was a really cool device but much like 10,000 RPM hard drives today they are dinosaurs. That does not mean they are not usable.

Ron