Written by my husband:  Our household electronic devices are multiplying without end. Managing these devices and files has become a mess in which no one knows which device has which file and considerable time is wasted just locating something on our network. “Storage Made Easy” was the tagline that led us to try the Netgear ReadyNAS (network attached storage) RN102. The ReadyNAS RN10200 is a sleek black cube 9” long, 4” wide and 5.5” tall and fits just about anywhere. It comes with an installation CD, AC power adapter, CAT5 cable and instructions, this model is a diskless system that has two bays that accept 2.5” or 3.5” SATA/SSD drives. We installed and 1TB Seagate SV35 drive and as our storage grows, we can easily drop another drive in the other bay.  Further down the line it’s nice to know that these bays/drives are hot swappable and capable of handling up to 8TB of data.
Within minutes of opening the box I had slid the hard drive into the tray and installed it into the device. All that was left to do with the hardware was to plug into the network and attach the AC power; total hardware setup time was about 10 minutes. On to the software, often a sticky spot for me due to my stubbornness and insistence that I could have written it better.

The Netgear ReadyCLOUD software install went amazingly smooth. Immediately upon connection to our network, the ReadyNAS RN10200 network location was discovered and available.  The device has become a very flexible part of our network,  I instantly copied a backup of our important files from 3 desktops and 2 laptops to a folder on the ReadyNAS, and then I started toying with the software. This is where Netgear began to really impress me. After setting up a username and password for the device as directed by the ReadyCLOUD install, I stepped over to my IPad and installed the ReadyCLOUD app from the appstore and shortly thereafter I had access to all our important files from my IPad anywhere I had internet service. Then I realized that the software is set up to automatically make copies of the photos on your devices and store them at home on the ReadyNAS.

This is awesome, as a travel writer my wife has the ability to backup her photos/blog entries etc. for the day from her iPhone to our own home network with the push of a button, from anywhere in the world with internet service.  Instead of spending hours or texting every photo of her journey, within minutes I can scroll through the photos on her phone and see her adventures!  It’s truly unbelievable.

The Netgear ReadyNAS RN10200 has become an integral component of our home network. The ReadyNAS is the go to location for all important files on the network and automatically provides a location for the remote back up files and photos from our iPads, iPhones and Android devices. For all the functionality of the device, the truly coolest feature of this setup is the ability to flip through and share our entire family photo album (1000’s of photos from over 15 years) from a portable device anywhere with internet service.

Product was sent for honest review, all opinions, strictly our own.