Netgear SC101T anyone? Does this seem ideal for my setup?

[imaheadcase]

I heard that last SC101 was terrible for network storage, but this new updated one has lots of nice features for around $200 mark.

Here is the newest one SC101T, ads lots of new features.
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/NetworkStorage/SC101T.aspx

Here is my situation as it is. I need more hardrive space, but majority of it is devoted to movies/music. I have a network with just myself and roommate, wired lan.

I have a new system, but have my "old" 80gig IDE100 hardrive i use as network share for both of us on network, he streams movies,music over network to his PC to listen to (im on Vista and he is XP if that matters to you). Of course this has quite a few drawbacks, most notably if that hardrive fails we lose all the music/movies, plus hogs system resources of him pulling from hardrive.

Would buying this network device, + 2x $134 500gig drive (mirror each other for reliability) be worth the cost so we can both just pull off it? I'm basically looking for the cheapest, but most practical way for data to be saved, but have room for more hardrive space in future.

Any suggestions? Is it really worth close to $500 for a terabyte (roughly) network storage, or just throw in 1x $134 500gig drive in my system again and pull from it again and pray it does not fail and not have a way to back it up other than DVDs which most people are lazy to use.

 

[cross6]

I don't know, I'm leary of netgear after all the times they've burned me with buggy, half finished products.

 

[imaheadcase]

I never had any problem with there switches, work perfect for me. Just not sure about this stuff. I might wait for Windows Home Server, sounds nice to if not expensive.

 

[JackMDS]

The issue is not Netgear or any other Name Brand, buy rather the specific device.

The SC101 S*x.

 

[imaheadcase]

SC101T we are talking about, welcome to the conversation..

 

[tyanni]

True, but given that the SC101 was so bad, do you really believe that Netgear released a better product?

 

[imaheadcase]

Well it DOES address lots of issues that people have complained about in previous version. I wish someone would review it or have a look at it 1st hand.

 

[cmetz]

Netgear's support is horrible, their warranty support is horrible. Their software is buggy. All around they are a below-expectations vendor in a space where expectations should already be very low.

Do you want to trust them with your data?

The SC101 had a well deserved bad rep. I don't have one, friends of mine do, they were very unhappy with them.

I don't think it's likely that the SC101T is going to be a good product. It's possible, but the vendor's track record is poor and their first generation for this type of product was poor.

 

[robmurphy]

Without specs for performance of the Gigabit ethernet connection I would steer clear. You may well find that the Gigabit ethernet connection to this device will only offer a 20 - 40% improvement in speed over the 100 Meg fast ethernet connection. If you do want to use a NAS with a gigabit connection then you will need gigabit ethernet connections on the client PCs, and a gigabit switch.

You do not mention what kind of machine your roomate has. If its a desktop then why not add a drive in each machine. Share these new drives across your network, and then you can each backup your local files onto the drive mapped over the network. Most of the access will then be local, so not affecting your machine. With XP you could schedule a backup to run each night, so the files are backed up automaticaly.

If your roomates machine is a laptop you could put their drive in a caddy and connect it using firewire or USB. It can still be shared acrosss the network.

Just my 2p worth.

 

[imaheadcase]

He is on new system like myself. We both have Intel gigabit connections with same switch/firewall (netgear, works rock solid, no problems for 2 years).

Like I mentioned thats not practical, because of situation of streaming movies. We download everything to a central location so we can view it.

 

[robmurphy]

If the switch/firewall is 2 years old its unlikey to have a gigabit switch in it. You will only see a difference if the switch is gigabit. If the gigabit connections in both your systems support jubo frames, then it would make sense for the NAS and the switch to support jumbo frames.

If both systems are new do you have an older system that you could use to mount the drives in?

Rob Murphy

 

[cross6]

Does it still act like a SAN? That is to say you need to load client software on the pc's to access it?

 

[imaheadcase]

No, that is the WHOLE reason I was asking about a NAS so I would not have to do anything on our systems.

The switch is Gigabit, supports jumboframes, has 8 ports, etc. Vista and his XP Pro detects it as such.

 

[cross6]

Originally posted by: imaheadcase
No, that is the WHOLE reason I was asking about a NAS so I would not have to do anything on our systems.

The switch is Gigabit, supports jumboframes, has 8 ports, etc. Vista and his XP Pro detects it as such.

The regular SC101 needed a clinet, you know that right?

 

[robmurphy]

What switch is it?

I have never seen XP detect that a switch supports jumbo frames. It may detect a black whole in the transmission path, but it does not "detect" the switch.

What size have you set the jumbo frames too in the intel gigabit ethernet connections?

What other options have you set?

I have found with the intel pro gigabit nics in my systems that I can reduce CPU load from 40 % to 3 - 5 %, and only loose 1% of the bandwidth.

If you are already using a well tuned gigabit network then adding one of these home NAS boxes will not be a good idea. On large reads even some of the better ones with gigabit interfaces do not get past the 12 MBytes/sec that you get with 100 Meg Fast ethernet.

 

[imaheadcase]

Originally posted by: cross6
Does it still act like a SAN? That is to say you need to load client software on the pc's to access it?

No that is one of the new features of it.

 

[imaheadcase]

Originally posted by: robmurphy
What switch is it?

I have never seen XP detect that a switch supports jumbo frames. It may detect a black whole in the transmission path, but it does not "detect" the switch.

What size have you set the jumbo frames too in the intel gigabit ethernet connections?

What other options have you set?

I have found with the intel pro gigabit nics in my systems that I can reduce CPU load from 40 % to 3 - 5 %, and only loose 1% of the bandwidth.

If you are already using a well tuned gigabit network then adding one of these home NAS boxes will not be a good idea. On large reads even some of the better ones with gigabit interfaces do not get past the 12 MBytes/sec that you get with 100 Meg Fast ethernet.

I don't know name of switch, it is black with ports on back, green lights on front with 100mb and 1000mb light that is on whatever activated. It has the standard software you remove connect into it that netgear uses. I know vague, but I got it from netgear.

Anyways, the intel pro Nics are in both system. The network icon on both systems says they are connected at gigabit speeds so thats all good. We are less than 50 feet apart (his room is across hall).

I still don't think you are getting the point of why I considering a NAS, he is not computer savvy, having a NAS would be a easier way for us to dump files on that he can access (movies/music, etc) simply because if we both got huge hardrives to put dump data on, the chance he would lose his data is a lot higher than me since I don't really have important data per say accept some documents. He would cry if he lost all his pictures, home movies, etc he takes.

My thinking is i can kill 2 birds with 1 stone if I just got 2 drives and each mirrored itself away from both of us which would make it easy for him to backup, and we both have save copies of whatever we put on drive (relatively speaking, if both drives go out that would be very rare). Plus a lot of extra hardrive space to boot.

I think I might wait for windows home server if I don't see any good reviews of this before then. WHS is looking to be nice so far.

 

[robmurphy]

Checked the web, and according to netgear's site you need to install software on each PC that will access the SC101T. It is not using NAS.

I use one of my PCs to store video and music files on. The other PCs access these files over the network. Its more flexible. cheaper, and I would recon much quicker than the SC101T, and thats on a gigabit network with problems.

If backups are a problem then just add another disk drive in either machine, and backup to that.

If CPU usage is a problem then try the settings on the intel NICs. I have seen a reduction from 40 % cpu to 3 - 5 % just by changing the settings for the intel gigabit NIC. The throughput droped from 301Mbps to 297 - 298 Mbps. It realy can make that much of a difference.

If you are still set on the SC101T wait a few months till its reviewed, then you can see what its realy like.

 

[robmurphy]

If he is on Vista its tough for the moment as the SC101 and SC101T do not have working Vista drivers. See:

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?p=27758

Windows shows you connected at 1000 Meg yes. It does not show the frame size. On all the gigabit NICS I've seen so far jumbo frames, when available, are disabled by default.

I understood the reasoning behind the NAS for backup and thats why I suggested an extra drive in each machine. He dumps his stuff onto his local drive. You dump stuff onto your local drive. You could schedule your machine to backup both, as your machine (and his) will have access to both drives. That way the backup is automated, and the backups are in seperate machines. If one PC blows up the other PC has the backups. If you have a big power spike that takes out both PCs the that would probably have fried the SC101T too. Most of the access are local and so quick. The main network traffic would be for the backups.

The switch sounds like a GS108. You can check jumbo frame support here:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101539.asp

As you can see it depends on the age of the switch. If the switch does support it you can reduce the CPU load needed for the same transfer rate using jumbo frames (less interupts)

Rob Murphy

 

[imaheadcase]

I'm going to wait on Home Server then from MS. Seems like a easier deal depending on pricing.

The newest Intel network drivers enable Jumbo frames by default. At least they are when you install them directly from Intel and not use windows update.

 

[robmurphy]

You will need to check that the switch supports jumbo frames, did you find your switch on the link I gave?.

What jumbo frame size are the intel NICs defaulting to? The max on the intel pro NICs I'm using is 16K, and I have not seen a switch that supports that.

It is well worth using iperf to check the network performance between the 2 PCs. You can alter the frame size, and other options on the NIC, to see what throughput you get, and the CPU occupancy using task manager. If the switch does not support jumbo frames then you will probably see less throughput with the jumbo frames enabled, and a higher cpu occupancy. If you search this forum you should find a good few posts about using iperf.

Rob.Murphy

 

[imaheadcase]

Ok thanks for help, It says its on 9000 jumbo frames by settings. I will look into using Iperf.

Thanks again.