Request for NAS review: Galaxy 3500MGB-RAID Pro

[ddalley]

Last night, I searched for any review about Galaxy Metal Gear products and only found one thread here with an unfavourable comment about their customer support. On the web, there is next to no customer reviews, too.

TigerDirect

Would it be possible for SNB to get ahold of a GMG 3500MGB-RAID Pro, to review it? You have excellent reviews, BTW! Great work!

Galaxy 3500MGB page

If anyone who has one has any comments about GMG products, including this one and their customer support, etc., I'd like to hear them.

They don't have a four-bay NAS, but as a two-bay enclosure, it seems "too good to be true" for its price. That sort of product usually has some sort of caveat, but off the top of my head, I can only see one (warranty is only one year without buying more years).

For its price, I'm thinking of maybe getting two of them because it doesn't have a RAID 5, or one 3500MGB plus a different two-bay NAS [one to act solely as a 2x1Tb UPnP movie media server to a PS3 for my very large DVD collection, so no back-up is needed and I can turn it off when not needed) and the second one to act as a JBOD 24/7 computer data back-up and USB network printer server for a variety of Windows and Linux wired and wireless home computers]. Some NAS systems don't specifically list Linux as a workable OS, but I don't know if this is a problem yet because I am new to Linux.

Any user comments about GMG products or comments about my NAS plans would be very welcomed.

Cheers!

 

[thiggins]

The price really isn't that low. Notice that you can buy a D-Link DNS-321, which we have reviewed, for the same money.

Your two-NAS plan is better than relying on a RAID 5 NAS. See Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID.

Linux working with a NAS isn't a problem since both support SMB/CIFS. But backup clients that sometimes come bundled with NASes are usually Windows only.

Unlikely that we'll be reviewing the product anytime soon.

 

[daanlungsod]

Wondering why?

Galaxy Metal Gear provides a wide range of SOHO products, that are widely marketed online by vendors like Newegg.

We buy them, yet none of these products ever make the reviews, good or bad. Do I detect discrimination towards the big $advertisers?

 

[ddalley]

Galaxy Metal Gear provides a wide range of SOHO products, that are widely marketed online by vendors like Newegg.

TigerDirect sells it here in Canada and, for the price here, it seems to be very competitive with the Linksys line, based on its features.

We buy them, yet none of these products ever make the reviews, good or bad.

Do you know/used this product and do you have any feedback about it? I only found one review of it by a user, not necessarily a professional.

Do I detect discrimination towards the big $advertisers?

You can't always access, sell or support everything, so good products do get lost in the fog.

Thanks.

 

[ddalley]

The price really isn't that low. Notice that you can buy a D-Link DNS-321, which we have reviewed, for the same money.

It is exactly the same price here in Canada today, but the Linksys 321 does not have any USB ports (I need a networked printer) and a number of the other GMG 3500 features. I have to learn which of those features are important, though. The 323 is about $210 here.

Your two-NAS plan is better than relying on a RAID 5 NAS. See Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID.
OK. I need to spend a lot of time here reading more of what you have available.

Linux working with a NAS isn't a problem since both support SMB/CIFS. But backup clients that sometimes come bundled with NASes are usually Windows only.

Good. Thank you.

Can you recommend a good (Ubuntu) Linux back-up client for a newbie?

Unlikely that we'll be reviewing the product anytime soon.

Can you say why you won't consider reviewing it, Tim?
Do you not have access to their products?

 

[jdabbs]

Generally speaking, companies that dominate the market receive more exposure. The same goes for companies that can afford a PR department, or the ability to send out review units.

Manta says Galaxy Metal Gear makes only $61k in annual sales. To be generous, let's say that their entire income is NAS sales. At $120 a unit (their cheapest NAS@Newegg), that works out to 508 units sold worldwide a year. That number may seem low, but claims of being "widely marketed" aside, there isn't much to indicate that amount as being substantially off the mark (even 10x wouldn't invalidate the point). The DNS-323 alone has almost 5x the amount of Newegg reviews (256) as GMG's entire NAS lineup (54).

But hey, non-existent market presence isn't nearly as entertaining an explanation as accusations of $$$bias.

 

[rogerbinns]

Can you recommend a good (Ubuntu) Linux back-up client for a newbie?

Short answer: Click Applications then Add/Remove and enter "backup" in the search field

Long anwser: It depends on exactly what you want to backup. If you have up to 2GB and especially multiple machines then many people love dropbox. It supports Linux, Mac, Windows and the web, and once out of beta you'll be able to buy more storage. (Yes it deals with edits on multiple machines correctly)

If you have your own server then unison is like a poor man's dropbox

If you have less than 4GB of files you care about, then just drag and drop them onto a DVD every now and then.

My needs were different so I made my own backup solution which is just over a hundred lines of Python scripting. First I have a spare drive in each machine. On this drive I have incremental backups created by a cron job (scheduled task) which lets me access old versions of files or files that have been deleted. Read rsync snapshots for background on how to do that.

The second part runs on my server and copies files to DVD. Since I have about 28GB of data to backup the script also works out how to split things into parts and intelligently keep things together (eg it knows how Gallery stores albums). It also encrypts the contents. I give the DVDs to friends to store for me, including one in another state as California could fall into the ocean at any point.

For small important pieces such as KeePass safes, email invoices etc I use online email services such as Hotmail (ie just email a copy to myself)

I also have various external drives that things are copied to, just in case.

 

[thiggins]

Do I detect discrimination towards the big $advertisers?

First, read jdabbs' post. He has some valuable insight.

If you read the reviews on the site, you might reach the opposite conclusion, i.e. why would companies even consider sending their products to be reviewed by SmallNetBuilder.

We have never been influenced by advertising in what we review or how we review it. In fact, we have more than once had major consumer networking manufacturers refuse to send us review product for periods of over a year.

We have limited time and resources and can't review everything. My focus tends toward "name brand" products that have wide distribution in the U.S., simply because that's what people are mostly likely to buy.

I do review products from small vendors that have unique features or value proposition. But I have seen enough of these products to know that they are pretty rough around the edges and usually not worth the hassle of getting them to work or risk of not being able to get support or warranty replacement.

 

[corndog]

I can definitely add an "amen" to that. I have tried and returned one of the Galaxy devices before - workable but a bit rough. There are a few others in this type of quality level as well. MediaGate, Vantec's NAS, and Thermaltake.

The D-Link products, while in the similar price range, are a definite level higher in polish and reliability.

One very small company that has been quite a surprise with their quality is DRI, the makers of Drobo. But the Drobo is a different beast, and I'd probably still be happier with the D-Link overall.

 

[ddalley]

Manta says Galaxy Metal Gear makes only $61k in annual sales.

Something is out of whack there. Even a corner store does more than $61K per year and has more than one employee.

 

[ddalley]

I can definitely add an "amen" to that. I have tried and returned one of the Galaxy devices before - workable but a bit rough. There are a few others in this type of quality level as well. MediaGate, Vantec's NAS, and Thermaltake.

The D-Link products, while in the similar price range, are a definite level higher in polish and reliability.

One very small company that has been quite a surprise with their quality is DRI, the makers of Drobo. But the Drobo is a different beast, and I'd probably still be happier with the D-Link overall.

Great! That's the kind of comment I was wanting to hear from a (previous) owner.

Thanks, corndog!

 

[jdabbs]

More than likely the manufacturing facilities are in China. Employees there would not necessarily be reflected in the count, especially if work is performed on a contract basis. If you read GMG's customer reviews, a common complaint is that support is inadequate; sounds like they only have a minimal US presence.

As stated before, the sales numbers do look low, but given the lack of customer reviews relative to competing brands, there's not much to suggest they are shipping a lot of units.

 

[ddalley]

For now, I think I will look more closely at the D-Link323. It has the UPnP servers, JBOD, net access and USB/printer port that I consider to be important, plus Staples just gave me a $20 coupon that will bring their price down to the same as this GMG 3500 from tigerDirect. The company is also Canadian and they update their firmware fairly often for their products.

Thanks, guys.