Netgear SC101

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

Nice to see this topic back from the - Even nicer to see you have a workable alternative now too !

I'll have to get you to buy lmao2k a beer for me.

[lfcrule1972]

Will do - he can PM me his home address and I will pop round with some cans !!

[JohnAin]

Needing more storage space I went and bought one of these beasties about 2 months ago thinking it would suit my needs perfectly. Ongoing, unsolved problems plague this unit to this day and I thought I'd have a quick rant warning anyone wanting to purchase what has become known affectionately as "The Toaster" in the Netgear support forums. Anyone wanting to see what the hell I'm talking about can see the unit itself here: http://www.netgear.com/products/details/SC101.php

 

From the site above you can read about how great it is. Below are some of the things causing me (and many hundreds of others), pure grief.

 

1. Runs incredibly hot. I mean really hot. Hot enough to fry an egg. There's no fans and the attached heatsinks are useless. The latest firmware solves this problem by putting the drives to sleep (allowing them to cool down), but this presents another problem as outlined below.

 

2. Often the drives refuse to wake up. This causes 2 more problems.

 

a.) All applications such as Windows Explorer, Turbo Navigator (file managers) hang because the drive has dissapeared. The only ways to get around this are to unplug the power from the drive and plug it back in. After a casual 2 minutes or so the drive re-appears. Or you have to reboot.

 

b.) The unit uses a DHCP server to get an IP address (available on almost any router). If the drives go to sleep the unit can "drop off" the network. It then proceeds to blast my lan looking for a DHCP server. Not only does it create enough network traffic to bring my gigabit lan to its knees, my router and firewalls on all machines report an attack on the network which my router then faithfully alerts me to via an email. I'd love my ISP to ask me why I sent 8,000 emails to myself.

 

3. To stop the unit falling asleep (dropping off my network and then blasting it), I run a cron utility on one machine to copy a single file (the same file every time), onto the unit every 5 minutes. This usually works but it creates a problem. Obviously, if the drives are being contiually written to then are aren't being allowed to sleep which brings us back to point 1 (running bloody hot).

 

4. Crap network speed. I've had to install 2 network cards in one PC because one of them will only transfer files at around 300~800 kb (kilobits) a second but this card will go at 35MB/sec over the lan. The other card (also gigabit) transfers files to the Netgear at 5~7MB/sec but only 10MB/sec over the lan. Go figure.

 

5. Once setting the drive letter (drive S: for example) with the Disk Management Service, the drive can appear as a different drive letter after reboot.

 

6. Mirrored drives can just "dissapear". You can rebuild them but you can't recover them.

 

7. Custom file system. If the unit dies, there's no way to recover the data.

 

8. The Netgear support site isn't run by netgear. No chance of any help there.

 

 

What a piece of crap and waste of money. I'll be pulling the drives out of it tomorrow (2 x 400gig Barracudas) and putting them into a PC and throwing the Netgear in the bin.

 

What a spoilsport you are. Here are some of the massive benefits the SC101 brings you

 

1. You get to use a file system thqt no normal human being has any experience of. You never need to use those boring file management tools that we all spent years using. You get to hunt the web for new ones. By the way you will not find any. Their own crappy one is useless, all part of the party.

 

2. Each time you fire up a computer you get to visit their utility in the hope that you will be able to reconnect. I suggest a sweepstake on the amount of time it will take.

 

3. Each time you log on it changes the drive letter for each member drive. This allows you to visit all of your scheduled backups and change the (dammned) drive letter on each variant.

 

4. You get to lose lots of data regularly.

 

5. You can spend hours phoning America at massive cost to be diverted to India and some incoherent help desk worker will tell you that he/she has never heard of Storage Central ... is it a railway station in New York?

 

During most sessions the little, devil will overheat at least once so you have lots of time for a cup of coffee (or perhaps a strong drink to calm your nerves).

 

 

.... and finally you can have the pure joy of slinging the bloody thing in the bin.

 

By the way, their help service is there to help their revenue, not you.

 

Try Freecom.

 

Me? Bitter? Naaaaaaaa!

Edited February 17, 2008 by JohnAin

[JasonFriday13]

Or, don't haul around so much stuff in the first place .

 

I have a 200GB partition, used less than 25GB of it so far. For security, I would like to run my own dedicated server for internet proxy and DHCP, along with ftp and email, and a shared folder for files. But it makes more noise than my high powered system, so I leave it turned off.

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

What a spoilsport you are. Here are some of the massive benefits the SC101 brings you

 

1. You get to use a file system thqt no normal human being has any experience of. You never need to use those boring file management tools that we all spent years using. You get to hunt the web for new ones. By the way you will not find any. Their own crappy one is useless, all part of the party.

 

2. Each time you fire up a computer you get to visit their utility in the hope that you will be able to reconnect. I suggest a sweepstake on the amount of time it will take.

 

3. Each time you log on it changes the drive letter for each member drive. This allows you to visit all of your scheduled backups and change the (dammned) drive letter on each variant.

 

4. You get to lose lots of data regularly.

 

5. You can spend hours phoning America at massive cost to be diverted to India and some incoherent help desk worker will tell you that he/she has never heard of Storage Central ... is it a railway station in New York?

 

During most sessions the little, devil will overheat at least once so you have lots of time for a cup of coffee (or perhaps a strong drink to calm your nerves).

 

 

.... and finally you can have the pure joy of slinging the bloody thing in the bin.

 

By the way, their help service is there to help their revenue, not you.

 

Try Freecom.

 

Me? Bitter? Naaaaaaaa!

 

A fellow, former owner I'm guessing. They really were a chunk of shit. How it got past beta testing is beyond me. Shit. Shit. Shit.

 

I would like to take the time to thank you for dredging up this miserable moment in our shared history and ask you not to mention it again. Like a dose of genital herpes, it's far from being one of lifes' highlights. Infact, were I ever to contract this particular STD, I would wear it as a badge of honour if given the choice of admitting to it or to the actual purchase of a Netgear NAS.

 

Freecom? Nah. 1TB drives are now less $AU300. All donations can be sent to:

 

The Shamus McFartfinger HD fund

c/o The station you are now viewing.

[spinningwheel]