Netgear SC101 Network Attached Storage for the Home (Page 1 of 4 )
If you have a lot of data stored on several different computers, you know how much of a hassle it is to manage it all. There are a number of possible solutions. Dan Wellman looks at the Netgear SC 101 to see if it has what it takes to make a geek's life easier.
Anyone with a home or small-business network knows that managing the files stored on each computer in the network soon becomes a chore, and the bigger the network is, the harder it becomes to keep everything backed-up, secure and accessible. Centralizing the storage makes everything much easier; important files only need to be backed up to one location, and different files or folders can be made accessible to different computers on the network. Space is not wasted on individual machines either; so if, for example, you have 4GB of digital music stored at home, instead of having copies of each of the music files on each computer, you can just have one copy of each MP3 stored on the centralized location.
Larger businesses and corporations have file servers dedicated to the storage and management of essential files, but small businesses and home users typically don't have a requirement for such costly implementations. So to meet the growing need for smaller, more affordable solutions, a range of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices is now available. The SC101 from Netgear is an example of a cost-effective means of adding NAS to your home network. More and more NAS devices are coming on to the market, offering different capacities and features at all price ranges; there are even tutorials being published detailing how you can build your own NAS device using old computer components and RAIDed hard drives. This is definitely a growing niche at present.
Netgear have built a strong name for themselves as producers of efficient and affordable network solutions. When producing the SC101, they have made use of patents licensed by Zetera, a rapidly growing company that develops network storage technology for the use of commercial and consumer markets. They were founded in late 2002 by an entrepreneur and a team from Western Digital and spent several years developing their technology which is now used not only by Netgear, but Kingston and Bell Microproducts as well.
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