Netgear SC101 Storage Center Network Attached LAN HDD Enclosure

[programmer]

IMO, this NAS is worthless. Bought one at Circuit City then learned about the Windows-only software, and other issues, and took it right back. No thanks.

 

[Jawadali]

Just an update, this is now going for $20 + ship (~$9) at Geeks.com:

http://www.geeks.com/details.a...d=SC101-100NAR&cpc=SCH

After reading funboy's comments, I think that it'll be good enough for basic additional low-power, always-on storage. I want to swap out the 2x200GB PATA drives in my pseudo-server in favor for a 750GB SATA drive (also on sale at geeks.com for $55 for a refurb Seagate).

Although I'll primarily use it in conjunction with another app to schedule regular backups of "static" files (documents, pictures, etc.) on each PC, How does it handle streaming DivX/Xvid video at 720x480?

 

[funboy6942]

I run divx, xvid, dvd iso, and some HD content I have recorded off off PBS, along with others with no problems at all. Slow goings uploading to these, but once on the bigs, case in point, to transfer 500 gigs from one pig to another takes almost 2 full days, but again once on, its all good, and fast enough to do what ever, and for the price, I cant bitch. Got all 4 of mine going with 1tb in each , granted not even close to any of them being full, but I got the space and some day I will get around to backing up my entire dvd collection.

OH and I still must say I have YET to have even ONE problem any one of them that people have said in every review of these units these have, or were to have. They have just put out another firmware version for these, and that may have a lot to do with it since most reviews are from when these first come out. But since day one, these have worked flawlessly and done everything and then some and have exceeded every expectation I had of them, and again I have 4 of these, and not a problem with any of them not only on my pc, but both my kids and wife's pc, and my bedroom pc, just chugs right on along and was worth every penny to me.

 

[kimchee411]

Originally posted by: CosmosRewind
Friends in IT have had really bad experiences with these units. The fact that it needs a special driver is just asking for problems. PATA only stinks too.

You can chalk me up in that category.

We used to install these at our client sites and they were quite flakey. Everything is proprietary: software/drivers and filesystem. If the thing doesn't mount all you can do is update the firmware and uninstall/reinstall the software and cross your fingers, hoping your 1.5 TB mirror isn't hosed. If the enclosure fails or refuses to mount, well you're just SOL because you can't just pop it in a computer to copy the data. Redundancy isn't much help there.

The only good thing I can say about this drive is that we were able to remotely backup its contents using an older version of rsync since it's mounted as an actual SCSI device rather than an SMB-based NAS.

If it were more reliable I might recommend it for users who have basic shared storage needs, but it is not reliable and it is very restrictive in what it can do.

 

[funboy6942]

I am not trying to sound like a broken record but I have found what you have written to be false and have yet to have a single problem with 4 of these running off 5 computers. I have yet to have one fail or lose its mount. As for it having its own software and installs on my pc as a storage drive with a letter attached to it, I am not restricted to nothing but infact can do more with it like saving all my game tap games as an example on one, then my oldest has installed his games using his C drive for saves, and the netgear to save where the games get downloaded and saved. Prior to installing game tap I change the Game tap file to like Game tap 2, install on his pc, copy all the games from game tap 2 into the new game tap folder, and bam, I have saved my ass, and his from having to redownload over 200 gigs of games from game taps servers anytime I redo my pc or his, its as if it never happened. I can do this same thing with games that can load onto a computer and never need the cd again, I just install that game to one of the netgear pigs, and bam, all 5 computers can run the one game from the one install.

Not to mention the sharing of my movies, music, pictures and god knows everything else in between, that I wouldnt be able to do had I NOT been using Netgears own software that installs and mounts the drives as letter drives on every pc I install it on.

As for losing a mount. I have had ONE bad mount when I tried to mount one of the 8 hard drives on my pc, and I was able to fix it using netgears software, quick and easy, click on the drive that didnt mount right, AKA broken, and it will set it up again with out losing any stored information, and I am able to remount the drive again.

As for losing your stored information, there is the mirror you can do, or buy more then one of these and if it should die, take the hdd and put it in the other one and you wont lose anything. You can take drives out and play musical drives between hard drives and pigs and it doesnt matter, no loss of anything. At $20 vs $100+ for others that have no way of mounting these drives onto your pc as a letered drive, and only one slot, you can afford to buy 4 of these and be set.

As for pata, just use a Pata to Sata adapter, I have not tried this yet, but I dont see why it wouldnt work.

I have had mine now for going on 3 months, and I cant stress enough that I have yet to have a single real problem anyone has ever mentioned in her, or on the internet, and I have 4 of these again running on 5 different computers and if they were as bad as all make them out to be, you would think that at least one or 2, on 1 of the 5 computers would act up as written, and I completely shit you not, just one bad mount that took 2 seconds to fix, nothing more then that.

And if some one wishes to talk about heat, thats fine, yes they do get hot, but your drive gets hot anyway in the computer, if you read above I have tested the temps on same drives in the pig and in my pc with only a degree or two difference between the 2, but since then have take it all one step further. I have used Di-Electric grease to lube up the drives to the inner walls of my pigs to make sure they will draw the heat out of them into the huge aluminum heat sink these basically squeeze into, and since I have a full basement, have these on a box with a box fan running on them 24/7, and no matter how much they are used, never get hot no more, which means my drives should last even longer then ever, especially when they go to sleep, something they dont do in your pc that they will do thanks yet again to netgears software.

I get no money for saying what I say, I just have yet to see anything happen with mine that you would think I should have had happen since I own 4 of them with 8 drives total between them running off 5 computers, you would think just one would give me a hiccup, but they dont, and I have yet to be constricted in any way using the netgear drivers, in fact it helps me to do more with them then hurt me which if they didnt show up on my pc as a lettered drive wouldnt be able to do all I am able to do with them, or close to it. But then maybe its because Im not sharing like maybe some of you would?? Hell I dont know, I just hate seeing something get a bad rap I have yet to witness myself.

 

[kimchee411]

How long have you had these drives funboy? I think you may eventually start run into mounting issues after a while. We've certainly had clients who've run them without a hitch for months and then one day somebody, or everybody, "loses their shared drive". There are others who haven't had any problems. Keep in mind this is an office environment where many computers are rebooted daily. I'm not saying it's going to crap out straight out of the box -- if that were the case we never would have purchased them in the first place. In fact, I am the one who tested the first one and recommended we put them out because, like I said, when it works, it's pretty nice. And hey, at $27.95 for a redundant NAS, it certainly looks like a bargain.

That said, I just don't have much faith in these things because when it comes to troubleshooting you're pretty much at the mercy of the box. With a NAS that runs on a "standard" filesystem over SMB/CIFS, NFS or other "standard" protocols, if the enclosure fails then you can pull the drives and recover your data from almost any computer.
Having to have a "backup" enclosure of the exact same type is pretty ludicrous to me. I've also read that you can't swap drives between enclosures; have you actually tried it? What happens in 5 or 10 years when your NAS dies, the product is no longer available, and the support lifecycle has reached its end of life? You. Are. Screwed.

FTR, a PATA to SATA adapter won't work because the drives are a very tight fit.

Drive letters you don't need a proprietary SCSI driver for. "net use [drive letter]: \\[share path]" (or Start -> Run -> \\[share path] for that matter) is a lot easier for your buddy who dropped by with his laptop to grab/drop some files than installing the Netgear software.

I'm not trying to crap on your thread here, but there's a reason this product has a 2-star rating on Amazon and virtually every single thread on the 69 pages of the SOHO storage section on the Netgear forums pertains to this unit.

It's great that it's worked so well for you and serves your needs so well, but I just feel the need to share my experiences and regrets with it before somebody jumps on it.

Personally I'm not a big fan of these little NAS devices anyhow. I'd rather take an old spare machine, build a file server loaded with cheap SATA drives, and tuck it away in my closet. It's cheaper and can do a lot more. Only downsides are that you need a spare computer, the power draw, and the heat.

Cheers.

 

[Jawadali]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Funboy, you can feel free to update the OP with the new Geeks.com link, as I think it's a bit cheaper after shipping.

Also, for those who are running these units, are you using the latest firmware/software?

Initially, I wasn't going to go for it, but it looks like there is a new, relatively recent firmware, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I don't have enough drive bays/rails in my current "server", plus I need to add more storage and want to reduce heat/power. The SC101 will be a good place to put those drives and still let them be useful, at least for a few months until I can buy or build something better (and move on to SATA drives)

Also, regarding heat, since this has molex power connectors, would it be possible to add a molex splitter and add some fans (either internally or externally)? Internally, it looks like it'll be a tight fit unless you have some 10mm or 15mm fans. However, since the housing is aluminum and has a finned exterior, it may be be helpful to have a fan or two blowing right onto the housing.

I haven't received the unit yet, so I don't know if this would physically be possible, or if the unit could handle the extra load of a fan or two.

Originally posted by: kimchee411
I'd rather take an old spare machine, build a file server loaded with cheap SATA drives, and tuck it away in my closet. It's cheaper and can do a lot more. Only downsides are that you need a spare computer, the power draw, and the heat.

Cheers.

This is the optimal solution, but you hit the nail on the head with the last sentence. Using S3 Standby would alleviate part of the problem, but getting it to work with mapped network drives/remote desktop can be an issue (at least under windows XP). I have attempted something like this, but I am having trouble when attempting to wake it up from standby over the network (not to thread-jack, but more details are here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...d=36&threadid=2261104)).

 

[funboy6942]

Will do, and as far as the firmware goes, I have not used the older ones, since getting mine I used the one before the newest one that just come out, and made mention to everyone here, like you did, if they were having the problems way back when they first come out and had a maybe a crappy written software at that time.

As for fans, there is NO room at all in them to put a fan so

This was what I did and works great, hardly warm to the touch if at all.

Also, what yo may consider doing is what I did, and that is go to the parts store and get a tube of Di-Electric Grease, its what is used to transfer the heat between things like electronic ignition units and something to take the heat away from it, or just use thermal paste if you got a lot of it. The drive bay on the left the hard drive walls, and top will mate up with the large inner aluminum sink they slide into, its kinda a tight fit, but using the grease makes it snug, and will allow the heat out of the drive better to get to the outer fins of the sink. The right drive bay however has not been flipped so the drive goes in the same exact way as the left, meaning the top on the drive doesnt mate up with the heatsink, so all you do to it is both sides of the hard drive and slip in. Then as you can see I have a fan, replace it with oscillating one, but dont have it moving, it sits higher then my box fan did on a box, and I just have it blowing over the drives. This I have found keeps the drives so cool they are hardly warm at all, where as before I did this they were running around 50-60C and you couldnt touch the units without almost burning your hands, but the same would go for my drive just sitting in my pc, in a large case with 4 120mm fans in it, it was just as hot as these in the pigs, but doing the grease and fans to them brought down the operating temp in a huge way, lucky if they are running around 100F, for its just slightly warmer then my hand now.

I do think though, those who may have used these in the past, should give them another try with the newest firmware update, that does work with vista, and may be happy to see all the problems of the past have gone away.

And yes, Ive had mine for 3 months, on 24/7, and only time not being used for something, is when we are all asleep for around 8 hours, after that, Im running programs off one while watching rated R mvies of mine off another, while I try to decode my collection and upload at the same time, my oldest may be playing games, or listening to his music I have backed up for him, and my youngest, beats the hell out of the rest by playing games, gametap, music, his movies, moving crap around.

If anyone cares to know I have found that I can watch 3 Divx movies, and one HD program all at the same time off one netgear pig using different video players, and anything over that and it starts to choke. I would then assume that I can run16 video programs at once if I wanted to running 4 movies at the same time off each pig x 4 of them. Not that I would ever need to have 16 movies running at once, but I can if I wanted to

System specs:
AMD 6000+ AM2+
Saphire 4850
4 gigs of Kingston 667 valueram
Samsung DVD burner
ASUS M3A78-EM Mobo
Nothing all too special of a rig, all parts bought used, refurb, or very cheap, lucky if I got $300 in it.

All the rest in the home are old ass ones, some socket a's, a old PII, and a 939, nothing all too special either, but mine does quadruple duty not only as my pc, but my game pc for times Im wishing the pain would quit or I would just die, or watch a movie when I cant game or do nothing else, or just play music and vegetate myself into a trance to take me away. So again I must say, if I was to have a problem with the netgear pigs I pretty much got every pc known to man across the board hooked up to it that if there was a problem with the software they would cause a problem, and we are on them all the time, non stop. I have no reason to lie or make anything up, I get NOTHING for saying all I say, just my 2 cents is all Im doing in helping anyone like me whos broke looking for something to get by on, and yes if I had the funds to afford better I would of bought better, but these do me just fine.

 

[Jawadali]

Thanks for the update and the tips. When I get mine, I'll see how hot it runs and try to rig up something regarding the cooling (although mines will be sitting on the floor in an office room).

 

[Goosemaster]

I too am in the boat that would not, under any circumstances, recommend this product. I can sort of see why you are defending it funboy, but I cannot agree with it.

 

[faZZter]

These aren't the greatest units for sure but for a cheap solution they work ok. No gigabit though. I use it to store a vast itunes library, appletv movies and whatever else. I stream movies/music to ATV without a hitch. (no it isn't directly from the unit to the ATV, it goes through a computer running itunes then to ATV, but the data is stored on the NAS units) I have two units with about 2 TB storage. Everything I put on these I have backups of on DVD just in case there is a major issue. One time (only once) something happened and I lost a drive and could not recover it. Hasn't happened since the more recent firmware updates.

As far as a drive just suddenly not showing up one day? Well this does happen every once in awhile, however usually all you have to do is run the SCM Utility and the drives are found. Sometimes I might have to power down the NAS units, restart them then run the SCM utility and they are found. I haven't gotten to the point of having to reinstall the drivers for over a year. (Again I think this is related to more recent firmware?

I still do not trust the mirroring however. I suggest not using it at all or mirror the data manually. If I remember right this is what led to my data loss. I had a broken mirror and when trying to repair it it lost all the data.

Anyway, if you need a cheap solution and can back up your data to another place just to be safe, these are great little units to store media on.

Oh, BTW, the newer unit I have DOES have two fans on the bottom of the unit, while the older one does not.

 

[Thomcat]

A NAS device will always beat a dedicated headless PC hands down in terms of total cost of ownership. You'll pay more than the price of the device in the difference in electricity in one year of usage versus the headless PC.

Of course that may not matter for the living at home parasite crowd who spend all their money on gear (PCs, video game boxes, lawn mower fixer up cars, fancy phones, etc...) instead of helping mom and dad with the house and food expenses.

Let the flames begin!

(Ducks)