The hardware side of the ReadyNAS is incredibly simple to work with.  If you're unit comes with the hard drives already installed, all you have to do is plug in the power and LAN cords and press the power button. Status lights across the top of the unit will give you a quick visual reference on the respective drives health condition. There is also an Activity light to show just when the ReadyNAS is hitting the drives for reading or writing operations. The door of the NV+ is perforated to allow air circulation through the drive bay. Likewise, the side of the enclosure also has holes at strategic places to enhance air circulation. The top of the ReadyNS NV+ also has a USB port and a Backup button. Through the setup menu's of the NV+, you can configure the external USB based hard drive on this port to be a dedicated backup drive. We'll go more into that later.....

      The front also has this very handy LCD display to give you ready access to the units most important information. Here was can see the Internet Protocol address that the ReadyNAS has been assigned, as well as the total drive space used and free. Just for future reference, this NV+ is loaded with four 250 Gigabyte Seagate 7200.10 drives in an X-RAID configuration. X-RAID is a proprietary RAID configuration developed by Infrant for use in their ReadyNAS systems. I will go into X-RAID in much greater detail during the software/system setup portion of the project.

     If your ReadyNAS didn't come with pre-installed hard drives, then obviously before you can configure the unit you'll have to physically install you're own drives. It's a very easy process especially since the NV+ uses SATA drives. That means no Molex power plug or ribbon IDE cable to contend with. Just mount each of the drives into their own frame......

     Then slide each drive into a drive back and snap the locking handle closed. That's it! You can even remove and replace a hard drive when the unit is powered on. That will be especially handy if you ever want to use the X-RAID feature and expand your total storage capacity by putting larger drives in the bays. Without a doubt, X-RAID is the most handy feature of ReadyNAS NV+.

     The back of the NV+ is almost like looking at the back of a Small Form Factor PC. Not a whole lot to look at; a sport for power, LAN, and 2 USB connectors. The cooling fan is speed controlled by ReadyNAS according to the heat levels and drive utilization, to promote a quiet computing environment. And quiet it is! Of course, during initial power-up the fan can be heard, but its no where near deafening! Once the unit is initialized and operating normally, it's whisper quiet. Even during periods of heavy usage the fan is very quiet.