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NetGear SC101 Storage Central (0GB)
Manufacturer: NetGear Part number: SC101NA
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Product series
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- More than just a networked hard drive enclosure, the SC101 provides some very useful features at a low price, making it a compelling choice for shared storage.
Read more
Where to buy
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CNET editors' review
NetGear SC101 Storage Central (0GB) price range: $99.99 - $108.80
- Reviewed by: Jon L. Jacobi
- Edited by: Felisa Yang
- Reviewed on: 10/17/2005
- Released on: 09/12/2005
The good: Easy to set up; drive spanning; private and shared volumes.
The bad: Currently accessible from only Windows machines; passive cooling could be a problem with faster hard drives.
The bottom line: More than just a networked hard drive enclosure, the SC101 provides some very useful features at a low price, making it a compelling choice for shared storage.
User reviews
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Bright idea with some short comings
by MarcusSternberg on October 4, 2005
Pros: - It works like it states; Nice small size
Cons: - Hot; some poor engineering; odd disconnecting; slow; annoying autoplay and drive letter recognition; not NTSF nor FAT32
Summary: I was looking for a device to put into my home automation structured wiring cabinet so I could all the computers in the home back up software to this unit. ...
Summary: I was looking for a device to put into my home automation structured wiring cabinet so I could all the computers in the home back up software to this unit. The device does achieve my goal, but I'm returning it because of its short comings.
Netgear needs to fix these simple but basic problems and this device will sell like hot cakes.
Good:
- All computers with Netgear's software downloaded onto it could read/write to this drive.
- It is really small (~ 4 inches wide). They made it very simple (I like simplicity).
Bad:
- Signs of shoddy engineering (particularly in the install software).
- Runs very hot. It needs to be air cooled. It would never be acceptable in a Structured wiring case.
- Having odd disconnects from it. I think the reason is that it gets too hot, that the mechanics make it run unreliable.
- Slow. Writing to it was reasonable (@ 25% the speed of a normal HD), but reading items from it takes unbearably long. This is acceptable to backup items which is what the main purpose for this drive is.
- Can't get it to keep a consistent drive letter on XP. I want it to be always 'H' on all my computers but I'm having no luck. After reading the forums, it is partly Microsoft's problem too.
- Always runs 'AutoPlay' every time the computer boots up. Again, it is annoying.
- Hard disks are formatted in a proprietary format (not FAT32 nor NTSF). They cannot be switched back into one's computer internal drive and be able to read from it.56 out of 58 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Not quite ready for prime time
by Mike0007 on September 20, 2005
Pros: Really cool idea......exactly what I need
Cons: Was this product even tested before it hit the stores
Summary: I installed my SC101 yesterday, plopped in two WD250GB drives and connected the SC101 to my WGU624. I installed the SC101 admin software from one of my laptops, mirrored the ...
Summary: I installed my SC101 yesterday, plopped in two WD250GB drives and connected the SC101 to my WGU624. I installed the SC101 admin software from one of my laptops, mirrored the disks, and was able to connect to the drive letter, create a few file etc. So far, beautiful.
I then tried to copy a large directory of pictures from the laptop (802.11a) to the SC101......hmm.....after about 5-10 minutes of copying, the laptop stopped copying....and the process showed up as "not responding". Next step was to grab another laptop....... maybe 802.11a was a bit much.....so this time I tried it with 802.11g. Same result
Last attempt......take the laptop, and connect it via a cable to the WGU624. Try to copy the same 10GB of files. This time success
So the real question I have......I can't imagine that this should not work with my wireless connection. How can this not work out of the box?
Another problem I have with the the SC101 is the heat it produces.......the enclosure does not allow for enough venting. I'm sure my drives will burn up in no time with the amount of heat that is generated.8 out of 8 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Perfect single device to store everything digital in your home!
by Calibrie on September 22, 2005
Pros: Easy to use for non-techies like me; helpful for cleaning up electronics clutter and keeping everything stored safely in one place.
Cons: Haven't really found any yet - haven't had the box for too long.
Summary: This is a really cool little gadget. And unlike other gadgets that are fun to have but not necessarily "needed," I think this one is important for just about every ...
Summary: This is a really cool little gadget. And unlike other gadgets that are fun to have but not necessarily "needed," I think this one is important for just about every home to have, especially one like mine which has become cluttered with too much electronics junk over the past decade.
My husband is a digital pack rat. Our computer hard drives are always overloaded with stuff - TONS of music files, photos, video and voice files. Not to mention my TV scripts and screenplays that I would just DIE if I lost. We back-up, but to CDs. So we've got all these old hard drives, CDs and even old floppy’s cluttering up our drawers and closets. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I put my foot down.
Storage Central has been incredible. I didn't even think anything like it was available. There's tons of storage capacity (we loaded it with two drives right away). We're transferring ALL of our stuff onto the thing. The great part is that I usually have to rely on my husband to do these things because they're too technical and I don't have the energy to deal with it. But Storage Central's interface is really easy to use - much like using Windows. And I've discovered that you can create separate drives for different categories of files. For example, create a G drive for photos, and H drive for music, an I drive for video, etc. It all gets saved to the same place, but it appears to you that the files are in separate places, making it easier to organize. Very clever!
My husband is also very impressed with Storage Central's ability to back-up files so that if your system fails, your data won't be lost forever. Something called mirroring. I don't know how to explain it, so I'll take his word for it.
Anyway, I'm very happy with my new toy. I hope this review helps those of you who aren't technical wizards and who don't understand half of what's usually written about in these CNET reviews!
(I'm giving it a perfect score for now. If I run into any issues/problems, I'll revise.)10 out of 17 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Finally! Simple network storage.
by ryan3926 on September 12, 2005
Pros: Easy setup, great performance, choice of capacity, RAID 1
Cons: Not many, maybe the GUI (which you only run once or twice)
Summary: This thing rocks! I finally got my unit from CDW ($115) and I was up and running in no more than 10 mins. I've got 4 PCs sharing 3 ...
Summary: This thing rocks! I finally got my unit from CDW ($115) and I was up and running in no more than 10 mins. I've got 4 PCs sharing 3 volumes for all my media. I even played a different ripped DVD from the same unit to three PCs at the same time with not issues.
SmartSync so far is really cool, backup and synchronization, which means I can work from any computer and have backup to.
Make sure you use the mirroring feature with Storage Central. Most people don't realize that consumer-priced hard disk drives can fail. This has a great mirroring feature which will keep you protected if it dies.
I am getting another one for work....all my MP3s....YES!6 out of 7 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Total Disaster!
by NG Enemy on July 23, 2006
Pros: If it worked as advertised, it would be great.
Cons: It fooled me into doing 3 fresh Win XP reinstalls on 2 PCs in four months
Summary: My problems didn't start until about a week after installing the SCM software. I did one good backup from two network PCs. Soon after that my PCs started acting ...
Summary: My problems didn't start until about a week after installing the SCM software. I did one good backup from two network PCs. Soon after that my PCs started acting funny. They would intermittently get very sluggish or freeze, requiring a reboot after a forced power down. In addition, they wouldn't power down when Windows shut down. All this was intermittent and didn't happen on both PCs at the same time. After a couple of weeks of fiddling with Windows and searching the net for solutions, I discovered the network drives didn't show in Windows Explorer. I hadn't looked for them in maybe two weeks because I was so busy trying to get the PCs working properly again. To make a long agonizing story ..., I finally began with a fresh install on one of the computers. It worked for a while, even after I reinstalled the SCM software (but I made no backups for a while). Then I did a fresh reinstall of Windows on the second PC. Before I was done with that -- took three days -- the first PC started acting up again. And I discovered I still couldn't see the network drive on either PC. So I contacted Netgear support, but unfortunately it was already more than three months since I'd bought the damned device, so I settled for email support. Useless! Two more months of going nuts, until it suddenly came to me in a flash that all my problems were being caused by the SCM software. I uninstalled it on both PCs and immediately all my troubles were over. I'm sure I can't get my money back by now, but I'll live with that. I am pretty sure the problems are caused by the unsigned drivers the Netgear CD installs.
4 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Just DON'T!! Huge Waste of Time!!
by sfolwell on October 6, 2005
Pros: Great Idea... BUT IT DOESN'T WORK!!
Cons: Completely Unreliable, Not Good for Data Storage!
Summary: Bought two. One for home, one for the office. Both had glitches during setup. Mirrored drives took a LONG time to "format". One partition dissapeared and I had to delete ...
Summary: Bought two. One for home, one for the office. Both had glitches during setup. Mirrored drives took a LONG time to "format". One partition dissapeared and I had to delete it and start over (before I had data on it). 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. 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. I hope I can get Buy.com to take them back!!
5 out of 7 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Avoid at all costs!!! CNet review hard drive provided by NetGear.
by HektikLyfe on February 23, 2007
Pros: It turns on.
Cons: It doesn't work.
Summary: Information on the box is intentionally vague. It can NOT use any size hard drive. The list of compatible hard drives is VERY small. It cannot be viewed from separate ...
Summary: Information on the box is intentionally vague. It can NOT use any size hard drive. The list of compatible hard drives is VERY small. It cannot be viewed from separate subnets. It requires software to be installed on each and every PC that accesses it. It uses a proprietary file system that reformats the hard drives. In case of a disaster you're out of luck.
Terribly slow transfer speeds. Files are protected from entire PC's not user based security. I tried and tested multiple hard drives, different software versions and different configurations. None of which worked. Netgear customer support was traditionally horrendous.
It uses TCP/IP but is not IP based. The vital instructions vary from link to link on their own website. They require for you restart each and every single network device on your network whenever the Storage Center loses connection with the network. Which it frequently does.
Occasionally prone to Blue Screen inducing problems.
Just do a search for this product and you'll find plenty to rant about. Perhaps they'll get it right the next time around.
I guess I'll have to wait for Windows Home Server.3 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Looks like a LAN-connected toaster and works about as well as one too
by Pete987 on September 17, 2006
Pros: Great idea and a great price
Cons: Severely buggy
Summary: Netgear had a great idea, but dropped the ball and released a seriously subpar product.
The old adage "you get what you pay for" was never more true than with ...Summary: Netgear had a great idea, but dropped the ball and released a seriously subpar product.
The old adage "you get what you pay for" was never more true than with this thing.
* You have to have special software on each PC in order to access the partitioned drives within the unit.
* Even with the appropriate software installed, the drive(s) within the SC-101 can only be mapped successfully on boot approximately 15% of the time when you configure the partitions ("drives") as a shared resource.
* If the drive isn't seen by the PC on boot, the software hangs the PC during shutdown (not a guess, but confirmed via multiple tests).
* The performance is horribly slow for a NAS device.
All in all, this is one of most disappointing purchases I've made the past several years. I should have done my homework first and read the user reviews on CNET. There's a very good reason why the user rating is as low as it is - this thing is junk.2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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If I can't find my sales receipt I'm going to smash it.
by vancester on May 21, 2006
Pros: It looks really, really cool on my desk.
Cons: Everything else.
Summary: I've had mine for a week. Gave it my best shot and tried to stay positive despite what I read here and everyplace else but it's going back ...
Summary: I've had mine for a week. Gave it my best shot and tried to stay positive despite what I read here and everyplace else but it's going back to the store now. The comments on this device are all true; it really is a piece of junk. I can't believe that NetGear released this to the public!
The first thing, when I tried to slide the hard drive into the "toaster" the metal strain relief tab holding the power cable secure inside the toaster was not bent back to where it was supposed to be. Had I not noticed this, stopped and bent it into place first before forcing it, it would have removed the components off my hard drive's PCB.
My second problem was partially my fault. The hard drive you choose to put in the SC101 should be empty. (And it can't be just ANY hard drive as it clearly states on the box) You can't just put a hard drive full of data in and expect it to work, although you SHOULD be able to. After you install your drive it will format your hard drive to it's own special file system without specifically warning you all data will be gone forever (but I should have known) and so if it's not empty you can kiss everything good bye. I did that. It seems the engineers at NetGear didn't think someone might have a very large hard drive in their machine already that they might want to use for this purpose.
It also falls asleep and if you're lucky takes 15 seconds or longer to wake up when you click on the drive letter in explorer. If you're not lucky then you will have to reach behind the toaster and unplug it, then plug it back in, it will re-boot for a minute or two and you are up and running for a short time.
Last night I was moving data to the toaster and halfway into it got an error message that it couldn't continue. Upon searching the toaster was nowhere to be found. Again, stop everything, unplug the thing and plug it back in and wait.
It slows everythng else down on my computer. I don't like the fact that it requires third party software to operate, it shouldn't. Why can't you just plug it in? The software is running ALL the time, robbing resources and the Zone Alarm program shows network activity even when you're not doing anything.
The bottom line, it's really cute. Other than that there's not much there. Wait until they get the bugs worked out or buy something else. Although I haven't looked for an alternative yet, I will start today.2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Can't Recommend
by rrritchey on May 19, 2006
Pros: Setup easy, compact
Cons: Short warranty, 90 days, then you pay
Summary: I got one of these. It worked OK for about 5 months. Today it died. Tech support would not help without paying. It is also really annoying how every time ...
Summary: I got one of these. It worked OK for about 5 months. Today it died. Tech support would not help without paying. It is also really annoying how every time you go into Windows Explorer it takes 10-20 seconds for the software to read the drive before you can continue. In fact this happen in any file dialog, the software has to go out an re-read the directory even if you are not going to use anything on the drive. It also is not cooled well. I think some hardware died in mine but they would not give me any support unless I paid $33. I would rather spend the $33 on something else at this point. This is pretty much the same issue I have had with all Netgear stuff. It breaks. It is not reliable in the long term. I probably will not buy any more Netgear products.
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: NetGear
- Part number: SC101NA
- 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.
General
- Packaged Quantity 1
- Device Type NAS server
- Host Connectivity Ethernet 10/100
- Installed Devices / Modules Qty 0
- Width 4.3 in
- Depth 7.1 in
- Height 5.7 in
- Weight 3.1 lbs
- Localization North America
Storage Controller
- Type Fast Ethernet
- Controller Interface Type IDE/ATA
- Supported Devices Hard drive
Hard Drive
- Type Standard - 3.5" x 1/3H
- Capacity 0
Hard Drive (2nd)
- Type None
Optical Storage
- Type None
Optical Storage (2nd)
- Type None
Storage Removable
- Type None
Video
- Video Output None
Networking
- Type Network adapter - Integrated
- Data Link Protocol Ethernet ,
Fast Ethernet Expansion / Connectivity
- Expansion Bays 2 (total) / 2 (free) x Internal - 3.5" x 1/3H
- Interfaces 1 x Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-45
Power
- Power Device Power adapter - External
Software / System Requirements
- Software Included Drivers & Utilities
- OS Required Microsoft Windows XP SP1 or later,
Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 or later Manufacturer Warranty
- Service & Support 1 year warranty
- Service & Support Details Limited warranty - 1 year
Environmental Parameters
- Min Operating Temperature 32 °F
- Max Operating Temperature 104 °F
- Humidity Range Operating 10 - 90%
Product series
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NetGear SC101 Storage Central (0GB)
Manufacturer: NetGear
Specs: NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central - NAS server,
PC,
RJ-45,
Standard,
Ethernet,
Fast Ethernet -
NetGear SC101T Storage Central Turbo (0GB)
Manufacturer: NetGear
Specs: NETGEAR SC101T Storage Central Turbo - Network drive,
PC,
RJ-45,
Standard,
Ethernet,
Gigabit Ethernet,
Fast Ethernet
Manufacturer info
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse NetGear products on Shopper.com
-
- Manufacturer:NetGear
- Address:
350 East Plumeria Drive, San Jose, CA 95134-1911 - Phone: 1-408-907-8000
- Email: support@netgear.com
- Fax: 1-408-907-8097
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