Netgear SC101 Storage Central for $32.79 Shipped

not worth it at any price

This is indeed a good price for the SC101, but I don't recommend anyone waste their money on this device. I tried to get the SC101 up and running because I wanted a good redundant storage of digital photos, music, other data, etc.

1) The management console did not always find the device on the network
2) When it did, the device did not always recognize both HDs I installed
3) I was never able to get the device to complete an initialization of the drives, much less the actual mirroring and sharing.
4) Finally, the recommended method to resolve any/all of the above is to shutdown your network(including cable modem and router) and restart network devices in a specific order, preferably with no other computers on the network.

I'm not the world's most patient fellow, but neither am I completely computer illiterate. The device is simply not network friendly, and after the trouble I went through, even had I gotten it working, I don't think I would store sensitive data on it. I spent probably 4 hours messing with this, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.
 
The system requirements on the Netgear website say:
-Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (SP4), XP Home or Pro (SP1 or SP2)
-DHCP server in the network
-Compatible with ATA6 or above IDE Parallel (ATA) hard disks

So I'm guessing this isn't an item for those of us on the Mac side of life. Bummer, too -- though OSX allows easy connection to every machine, it would be nice to have a NAS data repository for cheap.
 
Read the reviews before you buy and checkout the OEM web site and support forums. I don't think this is for the network savvy but its a great concept for the home network. CNET.com has mixed reviews. It would be cool to try.... if it was free. :)
 
I bought one of these from buy.com on black friday for $27 AR and google checkout. I knew about these since they came out last year but never read any user reviews until I got it. Wow are the reviews bad. Just check them out on Amazon. This product is a great idea but implemented really, really bad. I had read in the requirements that it required Windows 2K or XP but I had hoped that it only meant Windows was needed for installation/configuration. But no, it comes with proprietary Windows client software that is required on each pc to access this thing. I wanted to be able to connect from Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Not a chance. I played with the thing when I got it and didn't have any trouble with getting it to work with 2 old 40gb drives as well as two old 120gb drives I had. The 40s were even 5 or 6 years old so I wasn't optimistic about them working since it requires ATA6 and other people said they had trouble with older drives. I set up the drives separately, mirrored, and spanned, all without a problem (I did upgrade the firmware from the Netgear website before trying to use it). But the thing is somewhat slow and the requirement of using that proprietary client software really sucks. Any normal NAS would use CIFS and/or NFS so as to make use of native OS clients but this thing advertises itself as a "SAN" not a NAS device.

So I put it on ebay with the 2 120GB drives and got $100 bucks for them.
 
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