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NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central
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Product Description
NETGEAR offers wireless, Ethernet, powerline and phoneline networking products through a complete line of routers, gateways, switches, hubs, and adapters. NETGEAR products offer the strongest security and privacy options available to protect home and business customers.
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Average User Rating:
2.2
out of
5
Number of Ratings:
5
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User Reviews for
NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central
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Pity about the software
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Reviewed
September 29 2006 10:53:52 AM
1
out of
1
users found this recommendation helpful.
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Ratings:
3
out of 5
Pros:
compact, high-quality, quiet unit |
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Cons:
uses poor proprietary software I wanted to buy an alternative to a 10-year old PC as a fileserver in my home. This looked cheap and cheerful so I bought one.
Installation was OK, although it seemed to take a while to get everything seeing the unit on the network. The first concern I had was that it had to be installed as a network drive. UNC's were introduced by MS about 20 years ago, network drives are a barbaric relic of the DOS era - how could Netgear choose such a method of accessing what should emulate a fileserver?
This is painful, but the worst thing is that *the drive letter disappears and you have to re-boot to get it back*. This is appalling. Why on earth didn't they just get a linux OS with SAMBA in the box?
I suspect that the problem is that the device cannot cope with my laptop going offline regularly.
It's a real pity because this is a great little gizmo at a very low price.
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Cost effective networked storage
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Reviewed
July 24 2006 1:45:37 PM
1
out of
1
users found this recommendation helpful.
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Ratings:
4
out of 5
Pros:
bring your own hard drive, 2 slots, cost effective, mini toaster sized, quiet (no fan) |
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Cons:
does not accept ATA5 hard drives, must install client software to configure When my hard drive filled up, I looked around for a storage solution that could be networked and shared on my 4 computers. USB2.0 or firewire drives were out of the question since they could only be shared if the computer is on. I found the Netgear SC101 to be a great fit. Other networked drives could not be upgraded. If you wanted to add more capacity to the network, you had to buy another one and deal with one more networked drive letter. The SC101 was perfect because it features TWO EIDE slots, which makes it upgradeable.
I started with a Hitachi 250gb EIDE HD for $85. Plus $100 for the SC101, it meant that I got 250gb of networked storage for $185. This is really cheap considering that you can easily add another hard drive that you have lying around for free. Or if you happen to get a really good deal for a big hard drive.
Installation was simple and straightforward. Attaching the hard drive to the SC101 took no more than 30 seconds and pluging the network cable and power was easy as well.
The trickest part is the Windows installation. If you have a special network configuration, then your going to have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting. The SC101 only allows DHCP. However, like most people, the default network configuration should allow the client software to easily scan for the network drive. Once that is completed, you can format the hard drive. You can add partitions, assign passwords, share drives, etc.
Once the installation is done, a regular drive letter should appear on your computer and you can start using it.
Over a 100mb ethernet network, I was able to copy 17 gigs in about an hour.
If you need networked storage and can buy a cheap hard drive or just have on lying around, the SC101 is the best value.
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May be okay if you are better than I am...
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Reviewed
December 9 2006 8:24:55 AM
0
out of
0
users found this recommendation helpful.
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Ratings:
2
out of 5
Pros:
Quiet and Inexpensive |
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| Cons:
Horrible Software, Difficult Setup, and No Support I recently bought this from a local retail store hoping to easily have a bigger drive to share on my network for my laptop. This worked okay although installing the drive onto my computer was not fun due to the error messages caused by my attempt to add hardware that is not, "certified for Windows XP". It worked okay once I installed it but upon trying to change the setup to include my desktop found that my worst nightmares were about to be confirmed. Every time I tried to install the software it shut down my computer. After searching and searching for answers I found something in the online manual which said to "temporarily disable" certain drivers on my hard-drive. This made it impossible to boot my drive on startup but luckily I have part of my hard-drive partioned for backup. Luckily, this was within my first fourteen days of owning the device and got a full refund upon return.
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