Storage Central - Model Sc101 £68 (£79.98 inc Vat) is a hard disk enclosure with built-in disc controllers and networking features. This gadget emulates one or more logical drives using one or two physical Ide or Pata hard disks and provides a shareable storehouse facility accessible by all windows computers on a Dhcp enabled network.
A storehouse Area Network (San) is a range of storehouse devices linked to the local area network which are accessed and administered as one central pool, such storehouse does not want a specific computer to be running for file sharing.
The gadget is attached to the network switch or router and acts like a file server for all the windows computers. However, unlike most other network storehouse devices, this one requires a client to be installed on each computer in the network.
The basic unit is supplied with 0, 1 or 2 drives c£68+Vat for the empty box and £92+Vat to contain an 80gig hard drive - the storehouse can be bought separately, or you can add your own existing hard drives to the 'empty' box.
Product Description:
This unit provides both Redundant Array of Independent Disks (Raid) level 0 & 1 and can be extensive indefinitely. SmartSync Pro industrialized backup software is included which creates real-time copies of stored data from the clients .
This stock is well considerable for sharing and back up with the simplicity of using a local drive. Easy to set-up and install, join together to any wired or wireless router (54G Wireless Ethernet Adapter) or switch.
This is very basic storehouse area network type implementation but it is not a network attached storehouse device, so each computer on the network must have its own client software installed. There is no capability to join together to the device, using its native file share method and there is no platform-independent file-sharing support. (As opposed to the accepted situation where a Nas gadget will offer a shared file ideas that can be mounted in the Os's native method.)
You Must use the included software. Although the gadget is capable of listening on port 80, there is no web interface to configure it. The included software, running on Windows is the only way.
Data exchange (read or write) about colse to 3Mb/s. (this should be more like 10Mb/s. This unit only supports easy security, ie a singular password for each "logical drive" configured during set-up, probably because this is designed for the home market.
Good stuff:
1) Supports spanning and mirroring capabilities.
2) discrete gadget eliminating the need for an supplementary computer/server.
3) Can keep unlimited storehouse within the physical limitation of the two drive bays.
4) Once the interface drivers are installed, all Windows applications are able to utilise the attached drives as 'local' drive letters.
5) Easy to setup and set up assuming a easy home network.
6) Supports block-level data transfers and fast response time being slightly better than Usb 2.0 or fire wire external hard drives.
7) cheap compared to similar products. Pre-configured network-attached storehouse (Nas) devices range from £200 to £1,500.
Bad stuff:
Hardware Issues:
1a) No peer-to-peer network connectivity (UpnP support).
1b) Drivers are only compatible with Windows Xp, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 200x.
2) It only supports Ide Ata 6 or 7. Most new drives on the shop meet this requirement but older drives will likely not.
3) This ideas uses a partition format unrecognized by Windows, So these hard disks can not be disconnected and put into another computer without being reformatted.
4) This gadget allows password security of each private logical drive but does not keep Ntfs level security, there are no folders restricted to specific machines.
5) The disks are passively cooled and the gadget can get highly hot when in use. Whilst this does not seem to adversely consequent operation, using two fast hard drives could lead to premature failures.
6) No file level compression or linked security.
7) Each physical hard disk reacquires one Ip address.
Software Issues:
1) No web based management utility, gadget setup can be done from any computer with the interface drivers but each computer's drives must be configured individually.
2) The interface software is true 64 bit and is not compatible with windows 9x systems;
3) The configuration utility is easy to use but is very basic, I am using version 1.5.7.
4) Every time the utility loads, it asks the user if it should check for and setup driver updates. This can be bypassed but you are informed that "the software upgrade contains important enhancements" regardless of if you are using the newest version or not.
5) The update process takes an unpredictable time (there is indication of operation but not of total enlarge or time required) and is not automated; download and update are not integrated and requires answers to questions that are implied.
6) When the gadget firmware if updated, the drivers and utility software on all the computer must be upgraded and sometimes the drives need to be reattached.
7) There is an online help ideas which explains the utility features, but does not contain any instructions, user guide or how to information.
8) There are two configuration options, industrialized and a set-up wizard, drives created with the industrialized method can be attached by the wizard but these drives are ignored and can not be managed.
9) No audio streaming support.
Recommendations:
Buy: If you want an prudent solution, which will work right out of the box 98% of the time, and you have a typical home network with no complications, and none of your computers have spare drive bays you are happy to configure for your own backup drives.
Don't buy: If any of the above don't apply, or you want direct addressable storehouse from any part of your network, or you have important data security requirements, or your network is not currently configured using or can not use dynamic host configuration protocol (Dchp), or is using non accepted incommunicable addressing range
This is not a prefect technical explication and is unsatiable for anyone larger than a typical home or micro office environments. 6/10 for originate and implementation, 9/10 for endeavor and usefulness.
Effectively: If you don't know how or why your network works, this is probably perfect. If you do know what you are doing, you will almost categorically have tweaked something somewhere which will make this unusable or unnecessarily complicated to make work.
System Requirements:
Windows 2000(Sp4), Xp Home or Pro (Sp1 or Sp2), Windows 2003(Sp4);
Dhcp server in the network;
Compatible with Ata6 or above Ide (Parallel Ata) hard disks;
Physical Specifications:
Dimensions 6.75" x 4.25" x 5.66" (L x W x H);
Ambient Operating temperature 0̊-35̊ C;
Package Contents:
Storage Central Sc101;
12V, 5A power adapter, localized to country of sale;
Ethernet cable;
Installation Guide;
Resource Cd;
SmartSync Pro Backup Software Cd;
Warranty/Support data card;
Netgear storehouse Central Model Sc101 - enumerateWireless Network Detector USB Cable Micro Mini Kaka Skills and Goals Video