The Netgear SC101 is a network attached storage device that interfaces through Ethernet to provide access to files to each computer attached to your network.
The device is a small box that will hold any two 3.5 inch hard-drives. The box has cooling fins to keep the drives at normal operating temperatures. The cover is easily removed to allow for swapping hard-drives (when shut-down, not hot-swappable.) the device was a breeze to set up on the first computer, using the included install disc.
Then the “breeze” just stopped. Nowhere in the documentation did it mention formatting the hard-drive, but it did. I bought it to allow all of my computers to access the external hard-drive that I had all of my music and video collection on. I installed the drive into to storage center and ran the install CD and after is said installing driver it popped up “FORMATTING” with no warning or “are you sure” screen.
As soon as that was over though, I had a drive that showed up in “My Computer” as an additional drive. This was what was supposed to happen (except deleting ALL of my media files, of course.)
Because of the trauma of nuking my entire MP3 collection, I called it a night. The next day I came back and rebooted, and no drive appeared. I re-ran the drive setup (reformatted) and the drive appeared again. I was a little concerned about it reformatting after each reboot but I hadn’t actually save anything to the drive so I decided to save a file to it and continue the network setup on the other computers.
After following the scant included directions and trying to install the driver software in the second computer, I got a very informative message, “Error: Installation Failed.” So I contacted Tech Support. The technician asked me to reinstall the software and again I got the previous error. He then asked me to hold while he spoke with his senior technician.
Finally he returned and informed me that there was nothing wrong with the device, that there was something wrong with my operating system (this pc is Windows XP SP2) and that I must contact my OS manufacturer. The packaging for this device REQUIRED Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2003, so I would think that Netgear should know how to get their product to work with the REQUIRED operating system.
The tech then stated that I needed to contact Microsoft and that there was nothing further we could try (though we had not really tried anything yet,) so I asked if I could talk to the senior technician. He stated that he was the senior technician. Remember him putting me on hold for about 10 minutes to talk to his senior tech? I began to smell a rat, so I asked him about it, and he hung up on me.
The device reformatted my drive without warning, would not connect to my network computer, error messages were useless for troubleshooting, and tech support was abysmal. I would NOT recommend Netgear or the SC101 Storage Center, network attached storage device to anyone I liked or anyone I had to help.
DrEsquire
The device is a small box that will hold any two 3.5 inch hard-drives. The box has cooling fins to keep the drives at normal operating temperatures. The cover is easily removed to allow for swapping hard-drives (when shut-down, not hot-swappable.) the device was a breeze to set up on the first computer, using the included install disc.
Then the “breeze” just stopped. Nowhere in the documentation did it mention formatting the hard-drive, but it did. I bought it to allow all of my computers to access the external hard-drive that I had all of my music and video collection on. I installed the drive into to storage center and ran the install CD and after is said installing driver it popped up “FORMATTING” with no warning or “are you sure” screen.
As soon as that was over though, I had a drive that showed up in “My Computer” as an additional drive. This was what was supposed to happen (except deleting ALL of my media files, of course.)
Because of the trauma of nuking my entire MP3 collection, I called it a night. The next day I came back and rebooted, and no drive appeared. I re-ran the drive setup (reformatted) and the drive appeared again. I was a little concerned about it reformatting after each reboot but I hadn’t actually save anything to the drive so I decided to save a file to it and continue the network setup on the other computers.
After following the scant included directions and trying to install the driver software in the second computer, I got a very informative message, “Error: Installation Failed.” So I contacted Tech Support. The technician asked me to reinstall the software and again I got the previous error. He then asked me to hold while he spoke with his senior technician.
Finally he returned and informed me that there was nothing wrong with the device, that there was something wrong with my operating system (this pc is Windows XP SP2) and that I must contact my OS manufacturer. The packaging for this device REQUIRED Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2003, so I would think that Netgear should know how to get their product to work with the REQUIRED operating system.
The tech then stated that I needed to contact Microsoft and that there was nothing further we could try (though we had not really tried anything yet,) so I asked if I could talk to the senior technician. He stated that he was the senior technician. Remember him putting me on hold for about 10 minutes to talk to his senior tech? I began to smell a rat, so I asked him about it, and he hung up on me.
The device reformatted my drive without warning, would not connect to my network computer, error messages were useless for troubleshooting, and tech support was abysmal. I would NOT recommend Netgear or the SC101 Storage Center, network attached storage device to anyone I liked or anyone I had to help.
DrEsquire
