Netgear SC101 Network Attached Storage for the Home - Setting it up
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The setup of the device was very easy and quick to complete; once the hard drive has been inserted and the device is connected to your router you just install the software from the setup CD and then launch the connection wizard.
This walks you through a series of steps in which you specify particular options such as whether the device is shared, whether you want to enable mirroring and the device name. The device needs to format the drive prior to use but this is surprisingly quick; it literally took just a couple of minutes to format the 160GB drive I bought to test the device. The whole set up took just 15 minutes to complete in full. There were no problems encountered during any stage of the installation.
The device does have a broad range of features; it's network enabled, having a standard 10/100 RJ45 port and connects directly to your router, making sharing files across the network a breeze. It isn't wireless in itself, but connect it to a wireless router and hey presto, instant access around the home or office from other wireless devices. Once installed, it shows up in Explorer as a local drive making access very easy.
Integrated mirroring, if enabled during install (see cons section below), cuts back on storage space but protects your data from accidental loss or damage/failure of the drive. Mirroring is the only RAID function available, but the device does rely on a PATA interface to the attached drives, so this is no real surprise.
The device also apparently supports any parallel ATA6+ internal hard drive of any capacity, from any vendor/manufacturer. While I can't confirm this experimentally, and have seen information stating that drive size must be a minimum of 80MB, this benefit is advertised on the box so I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case. There is room for two drives inside the device, which are easily and tidily connected and housed.
A limited cooling solution is provided in the form of twin heatsinks on the top and bottom of the device. While fans would have kept the drives at a lower temperature, the near silent running would have been compromised and in the time I've been using the device, heat has not become an issue. The heatsinks themselves are pretty deep and therefore fairly effective.
Limited security is offered in the form of password protection that can be applied to the device during the initial configuration. The encryption used or the method of storage of this password isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation but anyone obtaining the hardware by theft or chance isn't going to be able to connect to the device without reformatting it, even if the correct software is installed for the device, so your files at least seem safe enough.
The device also comes with a backup utility: SmartSync Pro version 2.11. This is the latest version available (although there are hotfixes that can be downloaded and installed), but doesn't seem to have been updated since 2005. The interface for the application looks a little basic; it looks more like a Windows 98/ME application rather than an XP application, but function wise, it's easy to use and does perform its intended task well. You can use the serial number from your product to register for the full edition of the software, which is always a plus.
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