Netgear Storage Central Enclosure - SC101NA - Refurbished
2 x 3.5" - 1/3H Internal - Network - External

After being totally satisfied with 5 of 6 Netgear products...this one seemed like a sweet deal.Thought I'd record all my TV programs w/Media Center and be able to watch them from any computer thru my network, didn't realize that product only works w/ some IDE drives not all and that I couldn't use my existing files due to the fact the software format didn't recognize the files & said no data was on drive! Wish I would have read these reviews....I would have just bought a USB enclosure!
 
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PROS: Cheap. CONS: IDE/ATT Only, lack of decent cooling. This was so slow, I wound up throwing it in the trash vs. wasting any more time getting junk to work. After I waded thru the rediculous setup (what, did Dilbert's Office design this?), I worked, The RAID seemed to be configured ok, but took hrs to copy anything I thought this might be a good way to use my old drives. Wrong. Although I should have done it on principle, I didn't even RMA it that would have meant wasting more time, not that you want to buy anything here you might want to return anyway.... read the fine print.
 
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i bought the net a gear, it's been almost 1 year no problem works great, for the price compare to a server 4000 plus cals for software. get a 500gb and buck up the same. don't play or disconnect anything, or you will run in to trouble. good product some people complaint , but i will say read instructions, don't forget your password, after that you can update driver from website.
 
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I bought this when Netgear offered a ($....) rebate which I never got. They said I didn't include the original bar code which I did. For the full price I paid, I don't think it's worthed. It's almost impossible to fit my hard drives (both Seagate) in the slots. One of the drives got stuck half way for 3 days before I could manage it to fit in. Now I can't pull them off from the unit. Anyway, both drives have been working fine. I don't recommend this unit if you often work with large files. It will take forever to transfer them. I was planning to use it to share video and photo files (RAW, PSD and TIFF)in my company but ended up using it for songs.
 
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I have owned the Netgear SC101 for almost a year. Pro: It's a great product for accessing stored files from multiple computers. Cons: 1. Large video files take a while to copy them to or from the SC101. This was expected due to the 100 mbps limit. The new SC101T (1000 Mbps) should speed up the file transfers assuming you have a gigabit network and a gibabit network card in your PC. 2. The mirror option resets to non-mirror when the firmware is updated. My SC101 has two 250 GB disks with the mirror option on. After updating the firmware (see CON 2. above) the SC101 will not allow you to set the mirror option to on, on the existing drive configuration. Even though the mirror option was on before the firmware was updated. To recover the mirror option you have to (1) backup the SC101 data to another drive, (2) delete the SC101 current drive configuration, (3) create a new drive with the mirror option on, (4) restore the backup data to the SC101. It takes 2X times to copy the backup data to the SC101.
 
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I thought this item sounded ideal for backup but it has not worked correctly since I bought it. It worked only the first day and afterwards kept either loosing the drives or not even finding the drives. In reading the forums at netgear this is a common problem with a lot of people and since a proprietary format if the SC101 goes bad you can not read your data. Mirroring does not work and no VISTA, Mac, or linux support.
 
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I have been using this product for over a year now and plan to buy a second one soon. I have a couple of computers at home connected via wireless. The Netgear SC101 helped me solve the problem of trying to use the same documents, music and pictures regardless of what computer I logged on to, or what computers my children log on to. I use folder redirection of My Documents for all the profiles in all the computers so the computer does not hold any of the actual data. Since we have a fast computer turn over; this solution works great for us. When we replace a computer we just point each new profile to the redirected folders on the SC101. Perfect!
 
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I have been using this product for 2 weeks. Looks nice, like stove. It is stable, fast (actually faster than a old PC used as a file server), quiet, warm but not hot. I have loaded 60GB of home made video, mp3, digit photo. Also use it for family personal file folder. From now on, I don't have to copy pictures and mp3 all over the place. I tell my family that I do not want to hear the complain again: "where is my file". Couple of years ago, I bought a first genration NAS, and return it on the same day. It was bulky, worse yet, the fan made big noise. This one does not need a fan. Cons: 1. still not quiet enough, guess the hard driver is not in sleep mode, still spinning. 2. still not cold enough, because hard drive is spinning all the time 3. still not cheap enough, should be just like print server sold at $50. 4. have to buy a new ATA/100 hard driver, can not use my old ATA one.
 
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Running Storage Central with 2 200 GB drives mirrored. Using for backups only right now, but have a partition set up to store MP3s. No major problems with the setup and no problems with the backup software. Great solution for a Windows-only network.
 
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Jeez. So many high expectations for such a low priced device. I bought one and going to buy another. It works great if you know what you're doing and RTM. Like some have said this is for backups not a hard drive subsitute so performance will always be slower. Get real folks. This thing works very well.
 
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The idea behind this is great, but the device and Netgear apparently hyped up the actual working part of it a lot. I was surprised to find the device uses a proprietary file format (and slow at that.) If the device bites it, don't plan on pulling your 'safely mirrored' drive out and getting your data off with your PC. Lots of difficulties in setting up; had to visit their website quite a few times for various problems (partitioning failed, drive disappeared.) You have to install the proprietary software on any PC that you want to access the device. All in all, not even close to what I would call a safe or convenient method of backing up your data. On my gigabit network, this thing is way too slow for me to consider using it for any large media files. The device also got quite hot just during setup, and was using a pair of Seagate 250GB drives.
 
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I bought two of these, one for home use and one for the network at work. Took a while and browsing the netgear website to fix problems for the home device. The one at work I gave up on, failed six times to create a mirrored drive and tried everything I could find on the netgear site. This device also uses a proprietary file system, which I didn't see mentioned before buying. The software updater refused to work, and even the help file caused crashes. You have to use a command line utility to mess with failed partitions (which seems about a sure thing at least once.) The only good thing I could find with this thing is the idea. Netgear usually has good stuff, but they get an F for this junker.
 
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Be fore-warned, I wish I was...
 
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Took me about 10 minutes to set everything up before it was ready to copy my data to the mapped drive (that includes formatting the drive). I had about 10GB of data on my machine (2.4ghz HP with 80GB drive) to copy to my 200GB drive that was installed in the SC101. It took about an hour to copy all the data. People complain about the performance of the transfer rate, however, how often do you move 10GB of data? It is on the slow side for large transfer rates, but, you get what you pay for. Also, if you have a mirrored drive you will have decreased performance because it is copying the data to 2 drives at once. This occurs with even the best of equipment. So if you back up your data to DVD every month or so you won't have to worry about mechanical failure of the device or hard drives. As for being to hot, mine has been on for almost a week and it's not even warm yet, not sure where most people keep it, but as long as it is not covered by any objects it should be fine. Make sure before copying any data to it to update all the firmware and software patches, most issues people have with it are fixed with these updates. I'm happy with this device, I went through 2 NSLU2 devices before going to this one. Most people expect the world when buying these types of devices, bottom line is you get what you pay for.
 
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After all the bad reviews I read about the SC101 I decided to buy one. This product works very well and the speeds are very fast. The only problems you might have with this is if you are using older hard drives I could not get one of my 80GB drives to work but my 200GB and 120GB formatted and worked fine. Also the spindown function works very well to keep the unit cool. The only time it got hot was when I was transfering 50Gb to one of the drives, but it cooled down very fast after I was done. If you want cheap network storage this is a steal for the price.
 
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We bought this device and used two seagate harddrives (seagate 200 and 250, 7200rpm). The setup was easy enough, but we were surprised by the necessity to format with a proprietary file system (one of our drives had data on it, the other was new). After correctly setting up the device with both drives, we tried to copy files to it, which for some reason, caused our Linksys router to reboot, thereby losing network connectivity, and halting the copy operation. After the router rebooted, the drives would appear again. We left the device on over night, and in the morning, the device was no longer visable on either of our PCs. It was still ON, but could not be seen by either windows explorer or by the utility that came with it. We will be returning this thing later today. Save time and money, and try something else.
 
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Yes, it is slow. I use it as my backup drive. It is in a different site than my servers so it works as offsite backup. There is no free flow of air in the unit, so choose cool running drives! When I tried it as a mapped drive it would cause a BSOD. (Do not search the drive and try to open a file at the same time.) The speed and BSODs are why I made it my backup drive. It is a cool idea but the slow proprietary software makes it a pain.
 
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I bought this item along with a WD 160gig HD, I use it on my network to backup files on two computers. Have had it for two months and it has worked flawlessly. No problems with heat either. Although I only access the drive a couple times a day so not using it heavy, but I feel secure knowing it is there with my data backed up
 
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I needed central storage on my home network for music & photos. The Netgear SC101 allowed me to use two hard drives I already had (300MB & 200MB), but they were installed as 2nd drives in different computers. I no longer have to keep the computers with these disk drives turned on to access the storage. For my needs, I don't have any problems with the speeds I'm seeing - I initially copied 200GB by doing a drag and drop to the drive letter with the Netgear SC101 (the drive letters are a great feature) and let it run overnight. I also don't mind a quick software install on each computer I use to access the SC101, as I only have to do it once. I configured a 100GB mirrored drive for the files I absolutely cannot afford to lose. It's a great low-cost solution to get what I need most for data storage on my home network: network-connected storage, mirroring capability, and low-cost/high capacity disk drives. I ordered a second one.
 
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I agree with some of the other reviewers have said, but my situation was different. As a result, my review will be different. I upgraded a PC recently and had 2 hard drives laying around unused. Adding the drives to the SC101 was as easy as sliding them in, connecting 2 wires each and closing the top. The software installed easily and I had 370GB of network storage ready within 15 minutes of opening the box. The one HUGE advantage of this network storage over the others I have bought is that this unit goes to standby mode after 15 minutes on non-use. I have to turn off my other NAS devices because the disks spin constantly and cannot power down on their own. This defeats the purpose of having NAS because it is usually off when I need it most...in a remote part of my house with no access to the power button. Despite some of the flaws others have mentioned, I am perfectly content with what I got for the money I spent. I couldn't be happier.
 
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I wanted to share data between all PC's at home. Spent 5 days trying to get the networking and shared drives to work, but many articles on the web state that a Westell modem linked to a Netgear wireless router causes problems in networking because the modem also has an internal router which conflicts with the Netgear router. So rather than try to get a certification in network engineering to get the shared drives to work, I saw this Storage Central box as an alternative. All the PC magazines gave it a 4 of 5 stars review. In 30 minutes I had the box installed on the wireless network, and the applications on all PC's sharing the same data. It's great being able to do Quicken banking from any PC without having to copy the files from PC to PC, and it didn't require a network engineering certification to get it working. Data speed isn't all that sluggish using the Netgear 108 mbps adapters. In a home network, I don't see the gripe about having to install the software on each PC given the rewards for doing so. The gripe about the heat generated is real, and I turn it off when I'm not at home. I wouldn't recommend it for an office network, but for home usage it meets the needs for those of us who are deemed a network challenged user.
 
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It does not work with every disk - I have 2 60GB drives (a WD and a Seagate) and neither worked. I think adding 2 disks is a mistake - I tried with dual Seagate 160's and it just gets too hot. The storage manager software is clumsy but SmartSync is really nice and works where Windows offline files often don't. I got 5.5 MB/sec wired and 1.1 MB/sec wireless so wireless is fine for me. I use it to sync <> 10GB of data and it works very well. If you want a high performance NAS device for $100 - good luck! But this product is really nice for the money if you use it for backups via sync and light sharing.
 
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I am using my SC101 quite successfully. I have a few suggestions to minimise the hassles. Don't believe the marketing information. It is ambiguous. The SC101 is a microSAN device. If you really want a NAS (Network Attached Storage)either buy a NAS or run the SC101s on a SAN off the back of a fileserver. Just like cheap Laser Printers, the SC101 is driven by the host PC. Its performance is partially dictated by the performance of your PC. Don't expect the SC101's performance to be faster than the hard disks installed within it. People forget that this product is essentially an IDE hard disk with an Ethernet interface. This is why this product is so much cheaper and flexible than a NAS. The supplied Windows driver makes the SC101 appear to be a SCSI device and hence a local device and not a network device. This is why the SC101 it appears as a local removable storage device just like a memory stick. This can cause hassles because if the SC101 is rebooted or disconnected and reconnected again, just like a memory stick Windows pops up its autoplay dialog box. Here are some hints for reliable operation using the current software: The SC101 requires a DHCP server to get its IP addreses. Instead of using a dynamically allocated IP address, set up reserved IP addresses for the SC101. This is easily done on any DHCP server. Reserving addresses for the SC101 guarantees that the client PCs always sees the SC101 at the same IP address. If you don't, all sorts of problems can surface. If the SC101's IP address changes in the midst of a Windows session, the drive becomes uncontactable until the PC is rebooted. The password you set for each exported volume is not necessary the same as the SC101 admin password. And finally, don't expect too much co-operation from Zetera. I have sent them several emails requesting technical information and they don't even have the courtesy to respond. If Zetera was forthcoming with their technical information, the SC101 could be adapted to work with any Operating system and become a Giant Killer.
 
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The difference between using Storage Central and just stuffing the extra disks into your computer is that Storage Central acts as a node on your LAN. The brain behind the box is Zetera’s Z-LAN technology, which attaches the drive to your network. Any access to the data on the drive is done through the network, directly to the Storage Central Unit, not through anyone’s computer. www.tomsnetworking.com for more info on this intelligent network storage device.
 
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Before you buy, here are some things to think about: - This thing gets really really HOT. I would not want to think about frying backup drives that are needed in case of emergency - You need PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE installed on each PC that needs to access the device - not a very smart way to make this a real network device. Not sure how a networking company thought that up. - I set-up a drive and put some data on it, and had the drive not map after a few startups because of IP problems that were unexplainable. I had to re-initialize and lose the data - again, not what I would expect from a device that should be a backup device. - Very SLOW. - These aren't incredibly horrible problems, but think about it - this is supposed to SAVE YOU in case of emergency. I worried more about this drive than my PCs for the few days I had it. Hope this helps. I returned mine.
 
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I bought two. One for home, one for the office. Both had glitches during setup. Mirrored drives took a LONG time to "format". One partition just dissapeared and I had to delete it and start over. This was before I had data on it however, I should have stopped then. After deploying both and switching the office to the SC101, a day later the main mirrored partition became "unallocated" and unrecoverable. There is not much point in "mirroring" when the device/drivers/software are unreliable. We lost a full day of changes in a five person office. At about 40 hours to deploy and about 40 hours worth of lost work, this episode should not be replayed by anyone lucky enough to read my review. At $40 an hour, this lost productivity was worth $3200. Not such a good deal!
 
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Had some initial problems with setup, but that may have been my laptop. Like any computer hard drive, you partition the drive(s) in the sc101. From my laptop (connected through cable, not wireless ethernet), the GUI would hang during the allocating phase. My desktop, though, didn't have any issues. Setup of the drives was quite easy.

Through the laptop problems, I discovered that the GUI has some issues with partially created partitions and removing them. Had to get the Zetera UT manual from Netgear to run the command line (ut.exe) to remove the partition. The ut.exe file does offer some help in what the options do, the manual was nice for the examples.

As a comment to 64-bit Gamer's review, I hope you weren't expecting blazing speeds from this device. It is a 10/100 ethernet connection, 100Mbps (bits per second) = 12.5MBps (bytes per second), and that's the theoretical rate. I've got a Maxtor MSS 300GB as well and the performance is about the same between the two. If Netgear comes out with a gigabit version, you'll see your true hard drive's speed potential.

I'd recommend 5400 RPM drives because you won't see any performance benefit with 7200 RPM and the case is enclosed, so you have heat concerns. Unfortunately, 5400 3.5 inch drives are being phased out so the main retail outlets (online or not) are not carrying them anymore.

Speaking as an engineer, the SAN protocol over UDP used is much more efficient than TCP. The nature of their product is that it can mirror your data to several units/drives without having to establish a connection to every device and repeat that data. It broadcasts the data once and every device determines if it needs to write that data or not.

Overall good experience with the product. I can stream DVD's I've ripped without issue from the drive and I've loaded it up with 2 300GB drives configured to span as one big drive.
 
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Not bad for a piece of software and a box that gives me the ability to add and reduce capacity to the storage pool, mirror partitions, span drives and perform other basic management functions. I've had multiple applications access the same file, including streaming video to several clients, all hassle-free. I really like being able to access all my graphics, websites, video files and music from any system at anytime. Highly recommend this product as a primary access and backup solution. Not recommended to Mac and Linux user's at this time. Support for these platform to follow in the near future.
 
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I bought this product last week and I am, so far, VERY happy. Here are some of the reasons: 1. Had it up a running in less than 10 minutes. 2. No problem for me that you need to install a driver which also installs a very easy/friendly user interface. (most all other devices I buy and come home with also require me to insert the CD and install something) 3. Performance is more than acceptable. In fact, it is faster than 2 other NAS devices I have in our offices; Buffalo and Maxtor 4. I REALLY like the fact that the volumes show up as a letter drive, i.e. D:E:F: drives. All of my existing apps can handle and use this immediately. So far, VERY happy and satisfied. Charlie
 
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I bought this product last week and I am, so far, VERY happy. Here are some of the reasons: 1. Had it up a running in less than 10 minutes. 2. No problem for me that you need to install a driver which also installs a very easy/friendly user interface. (most all other devices I buy and come home with also require me to insert the CD and install something) 3. Performance is more than acceptable. In fact, it is faster than 2 other NAS devices I have in our offices; Buffalo and Maxtor 4. I REALLY like the fact that the volumes show up as a letter drive, i.e. D:E:F: drives. All of my existing apps can handle and use this immediately. So far, VERY happy and satisfied. Charlie
 
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For the longest time I've been looking at the Buffalo Terabit file server, but the cost was to great. Netgear has this alternative, which in some ways is better since the size of this is controlled by whatever you need. Instillation of the hard drive(s) is relatively simple, and the drive(s) are protected by the metal chassis that has cooling fins on top and bottom. Configuration and instillation of the drive(s) can only be made through the included software. However, the response time is surprisingly good, even via a wireless connection. One other drawback I noticed was large and many files are best transferred through a wired connection. I had many a dropped connections trying to perform this over a wireless connection.
 
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For the longest time I've been looking at the Buffalo Terabit file server, but the cost was to great. Netgear has this alternative, which in some ways is better since the size of this is controlled by whatever you need. Instillation of the hard drive(s) is relatively simple, and the drive(s) are protected by the metal chassis that has cooling fins on top and bottom. Configuration and instillation of the drive(s) can only be made through the included software. However, the response time is surprisingly good, even via a wireless connection. One other drawback I noticed was large and many files are best transferred through a wired connection. I had many a dropped connections trying to perform this over a wireless connection.
 
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The Netgear SC101's marketing sheet would excite anyone who reads it with its promise of network-attached storage and data protection for your critical files. That's why I bought it. Read below to see why I returned it: The truth is, it does live up to the claims of providing a "SAN for the consumer masses", but it falls short in several key areas. 1) The "Windows XP" support means sleepy Windows XP 32-bit. There is no support for Windows XP Professional x64. The Netgear forums in several countries state clearly that there are no plans to add support for this "OS-of-Choice" for enthusiasts. Just a note here to Netgear: ENTHUSIASTS LIKE ME ARE THE EARLY ADOPTERS YOU NEED TO SELL TO INITIALLY. ADD SUPPORT FOR OUR OS. 2) The device does include drivers for 32-bit Windows, but their NOT digitally signed drivers. This means that Netgear and their vendor for the SAN technology, Zetera, are too cheap to have Microsoft test and sign the drivers. I always get nervous when I have to submit to installing hardware drivers that aren't signed. 3) After installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Professional (sleepy 32-bit) on a spare Raptor, I installed the latest drivers for the device. I proceeded to begin copying my critical files to the device and noticed that the rate was slower than Christmas in Korea. I then benchmarked the SC101's performance with HDTach and it turned in a pathetic 6.7MB/sec average, 8.0MB max transfer rate. This is compared to a locally-attached drive that gets 67MB/sec average, 72MB/sec max. The point of this is that anyone considering purchasing this for digital pictures, audio files or other large media files better be sure that they're willing to wait for transfers. 4) Your lay person would assume that you could simply remove your HD from your PC with your precious data already on it and simply install it into the SC101 and viola!- a working SAN! Well, before you do that, you should probably read the installation manual. Fortunately, I saw this before sacrificing my data to another quirk of Netgear's SAN implementation. It seems that the device has a proprietary file system and any drive you install must be formatted prior to use. This means that if you have 70GB for music like me, you get to find a place somewhere on your PC to store those files temporarily while you install your largest drive into the SC101 and format it. Then, you get to wait for 70GB to copy to it at 6.7MB/sec. Also, the SAN technology runs on UDP port 20001 which is difficult to configure for some firewalls and less reliable than TCP. Oh, also, if you're thinking about using 1 large drive for now, then adding a second drive later and creating a mirror set to protect your existing data - think again. You MUST have both drives installed and select mirroring when you create the volume. Adding the redundant drive later is not possible. You'd be back to finding a home for the data somewhere else by copying it off (at 6.7MB/sec.) and then copying it back (at 6.7MB/sec.) after you'd formatted the mirror set. So, you can see that overall, the device SOUNDS like a good idea. The reality is that you'd probably be better off waiting for the competition to improve on one or more of these issues.
 
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