Netgear SC101 NAS

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

Against my better judgement I went and bought one of these thingies (Network Attached Storage or NAS) yesterday. I suppose for the price they really aren't too bad. Capacity-wise, they can apparently hold 2 x 500gig drives.

 

Pros:

 

.. A cheap way to add a terabyte of HD space at roughly $1 a gig.

.. Easy setup. The unit just needs a dhcp server on the network and a bit of common sense to get it working.

.. Easy installation software.

.. Install time from start to finish (including opening the unit and installing drives) about 15 minutes.

.. Includes configurable synchro s/ware for easy backups.

.. The NAS is treated as a local drive instead of a network drive.

.. Very quiet and also very small.

.. Drives and/or drivespace can be allocated on a per user or per machine basis which can be password protected.

.. Drives can be run in RAID mode if required with striping, mirroring etc.

 

 

Cons:

 

.. Only works with Windows. Linux/Mac users can't use it.

.. Slow network speed (10/100). It took 5 hours to backup 85gigs of data.

.. The manual (or what passes for it) really sucks. Options are available for the NAS that just aren't in the manual such as using shared drives.

.. Driver software must be installed on all machines wanting to access the NAS.

.. Uses a custom file-system meaning that drives in the unit can't be removed and dropped into a PC if the unit fails.

.. Backup util (Smartsync Pro), only has a single user licence. Not very useful for those with multiple PCs.

 

 

Initial impressions:

 

Not bad for what it does. I'm undecided on whether or not I'll add more drives to the initial 120gig that came with the unit. To put a terabyte in this thing wouldn't be hard but it would be hard to justify the cost verus its performance. 500gig drives are about $500 each here. Add the cost of the NAS and it's around $AUS1300. A Buffalo Terastation begins at a terabyte (complete with gigabit, print server, multiple USB ports, 4 x super fast scsi drives and easy expandability), for around $AUS2000.

 

Conclusion:

 

For light to moderate home use connected to 1 or 2 PCs, this option is ideal. It's cheap and easy and does what is advertised. For heavy users with many PCs attached to a network, I wouldn't recommend it. It's main downfall (in my opinion) is the lack of gigabit.

 

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/SC101.php

 

 

 

<soapbox mode off>

[kirk1701™]

Thought this might intrest you shamus

 

I don't know much about the NAS but this was on this weeks news letter.

 

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-223-...D-ADSNASKIT.php

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

Bloody hell. The site's down. I'll check again in a few hours. Thanks for the link.

[kirk1701™]

Bloody hell. The site's down. I'll check again in a few hours. Thanks for the link.

 

Yea I had trouble pulling it up also, finally got it after about five tries.

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

Finally got to read it. Interesting concept. Given that the reviewer had so much trouble with it, it makes you wonder how it got released in the first place. A bit more info about the unit itself would have been nice though.