We're not in a hole. A lot of companies would like to be in our hole - Scott 'touch'n'feely' McNealy
VERY RARELY DO we run into a product that is flat out unacceptable much less potentially dangerous, but the Netgear Storage Central SC101 is both. What started out as a day building a small home network for a friend has ended up as three days of pain with many more dead parts than we started out with, including a PC.
Let me declare up front that I am no storage or PC novice, I have done everything from writing a TCP/IP stack to designing and implementing enterprise-level storage solutions. Rarely do I need to read a manual on something so simple as a home NAS to find out anything more than the default password. This time however, the NAS won.
Of late, Netgear has been pretty good to me. It doesn't seem to make devices that die with the same rapidity as the more recent Linksys boxes, and it made the first router I could not overwhelm while torrenting. When my friend asked me to go shopping with him, the all Netgear lineup was on the short list.
We ended up with a Wireless-G router, the Storage Central SC101 and 2 500G Western Digital drives in the same family as some on the Netgear recommended list. All this was going into a household with a laptop, a Dell Dimension (P4 dual core, dead stock and dull) PC, and a generic cable modem. The router went in without a hitch, wireless was set up easily, and all was happy there.
The first pain occurred when I had to put I the drives. It looks like the SC101 is a good design, there is a screw in front that you can turn with a coin, and the front pops off easily. The drives slot in with the rear ends sticking out, and the short IDE and power cables pop on.
The idea is sound, but the drives, standard IDE, just don't want to fit. The people who designed this seem to have misread the specs on a dirt standard 3.5-inch , a millimetre or two more clearance would have made the initial impression go from pain and annoyance to the intended ease. In the end, pain and annoyance reigned.
Due to lack of appropriate length Ethernet cables, the installation was stopped for the day, probably a good thing seeing as I already wanted to throw the box into a nearby lake. Travel, work and life then intervened, and 30 days passed before I got back to the task, a welcome respite, but not long enough.
Armed with longer cables, I went back and powered the SC101 on for the first time and started the configuration.
I should have stayed at home.
Putting the first of two CDs with the configuration software in, the first problem cropped up. The software helpfully asked if it should check for an updated version of the program before installation, a refreshing and useful idea.
I agreed, and it went out, found a newer version, 3.x instead of the 1.x on the CD, immediately offering to download and install it in place of the older one. I agreed, and it went off and pulled down the newer version. The newer version came up as corrupt and it failed miserably. Back to the CD then.
The older version went in easily enough, and a reboot later, it ran and again asked to get the new version. This time, the download succeeded, and a few cryptic messages later, it uninstalled the old version, put in the new one, and correctly prompted the user in all the right ways. This was about the only thing that went correctly.
Once the software loaded, I immediately went to the advanced setup, wizards rarely allow you to mirror drives, a must for this setup. In general, setup software is pretty sparse but usually functional if you have enough background. Even by those low standards, the Netgear software is poor, and it borders on non-functional.
At setup, the software gives you two IP addresses with no explanation, and when you continue, it gives you the same IPs, with a box below that for configuring drives. The IPs are not selectable as you would expect, leading to much annoyance. A screen capture would be in order here, but as you will find out later, that is not possible in the aftermath of the SC101 setup. In any case, the box you have to enter the information has an outsized font that is larger than the area allowed for it, so you lose a few pixels of any text.
Sigh.
Ergonomics, or lack thereof, don't do much more than annoy, and it was a matter
of minutes before the screen was decoded and a mirrored drive was specified.
After 15 minutes of watching the screen blink "formatting", I took my leave for
the day.
When I returned the next day, hilarity ensued. The format seemed to have worked, but there were no drives listed on the PC. The Netgear software listed the IPs, listed the drives, and showed both had zero free space. I took that as a good sign, the space was allocated correctly, and it was on both drives, so the mirroring worked. Silly me for thinking that.
The created volume was nowhere to be found at all. Browsing the network did not show it, nothing showed up in drive manager, and the Netgear software was singularly unhelpful. The vast majority of the options on the main screen returned either an 'all is well' message or an error intoning inapplicability. Wonderful.
So, off to the web site, the so called manuals included on the CD were not only two versions out of date, but also quite worthless. The web site was one of the least helpful I have run into in a long time. Mind you, anything else would have been such a shock so great I might have fallen out of my chair and hit my head on something.
The main problem is that the questions answered on the site seemed to all deal with what happens when the drive is successfully attached to the PC, with the vast and unhelpful minority dealt with the unattached case. None dealt with my situation.
Seeing as how the software was utterly and frustratingly useless, the web site was aimed at people entertained by shiny things, and no other tools available, I decided to reset the box and start anew. This, coupled with learning from your mistakes, tends to fix most problems.
Once again, silly me, I expected the hard reset to actually reset the box, not just reboot it. Resetting the SC101 does nothing, it does not actually reset it. The same drives came up, the configuration exactly as it was before the reset. Trying the same thing at power on accomplished the same squat all. I have never encountered a device that you are not able to reset at all.
Could things get worse? Yes they could. Buried in the unhelpful web site is a command line tool that seems to be the only way to really reset an uncooperative array. I dutifully typed in the commands, and unsurprisingly it told me to get stuffed with an error message that indicated failure and indignation at my trying in the first place. All the other options failed as well. Wonderful.
As a last resort, I tried to uninstall the Netgear software in the vain hope that a clean install might make a difference. Silly, silly me, the )#$(*ing software would not uninstall because of a perceived error in mirroring. Helpfully, it told me to contact support and gave a URL containing phone numbers to call. It was a long URL, but thankfully they made it not only non-linked, but also not cut and pasteable.
A hint to the nitwits at Netgear: long complicated URLs are no fun to type in when people are already annoyed at you. That would be me.
But wait, it gets better.
The software half-uninstalled and would not run, but the icons, start menu
listings and add/remove entries were still there. Attempting to uninstall again
removed the add/remove entries, but not the icons or program remnants.
Brilliant! Now I had icons that did nothing but complain instead of
uncooperative software I had broken software. In retrospect, this was as step
up.
So, I attempted to reinstall, and it put in the CD containing the 1.x version which then prompted me to upgrade. That of course failed with the same mirror error that the uninstall did. So now I had the 1.x version, remnants of the 3.x version, and was no closer to the SC101 working.
By starting the 3.x upgrade and turning off the SC101 before the software checked, I was able to get 3.x installed, and 1.x manually uninstalled without drama. So far, so non-disastrous, but I was out of options. Time to call tech support.
Typing in the aforementioned long URL got me to a list of phone support numbers for Netgear, and on a Sunday afternoon, I got the first worrisome sign. You know you are in deep trouble when the tech support number offers you a specific option for your device and the maker makes hundreds of things. Even worse, it is the first option.
The first time, they answered after about 10 minutes of annoying hold music, and the person on the other end took my serial number, the name of the friend who owned it, and then disconnected me. The second time was less than two minutes on hold got me to a person. Things were looking up, and they got the serial, name and phone number before we were disconnected. They didn't call back.
The third time was when I found out that after about 25 minutes on hold, Netgear forces you to leave a message and tells you that they will call you back. Yeah right. The fourth call was not disconnected until I ended up hanging up in frustration 50+ minutes in, but it had been answered by a human in less than 10 minutes.
After the serial number was read yet again, the thoroughly unhelpful and quite green noob on the end of the line set about annoying me. I nicely explained to her that I was computer literate, and mentioned that the software would see the drives but could not address them, and the mirror appeared to not be working.
She obviously was not going to deviate from the flowchart, and asked me for the network configuration, in this case, the PC connected to the Netgear Wir eless-G router, and directly to the SC101 NAS. The WAN port on the G had a cable modem on it, and that was the entirety of the topology.
This perplexed the technician. The generic cable modem without a manufacturer without a manufacturer name on it (it looked like a Motorola unit) seemed to unnerve her, but eventually she moved on.
"Can you power cycle the unit for me?" When you hear those words enough, you realise that hell is not going to be that bad, and this was the point where hell lost any scariness in my book. I did so, and we went through the flowchart eventually getting to the point that I told her about within a minute of her answering.
Mind you, this took just over half an hour with me getting put on hold for minutes at a time several times. The technician didn't have a clue because I could hear the next level tech support telling her what to say. "Tell him to XYZ ", quickly followed by "Sir, can you XYZ". It would be high comedy, but it was happening to me.
Reinstalling always failed with the mirror error, something I mentioned in the early part of the now 30+ minute call. I could almost hear the light go on on the other end of the phone. Five minutes of hold later followed by more suggestions by the mysterious tech support engineer in the background, and a minor miracle happened.
Yes, she gave me a good idea. No, not only that, a great idea that I hadn't thought of, open the box and disconnect one of the drives. No second drive to mirror, potentially no more mirror errors. It only took about 40 minutes to get this far, but we were making progress.
It didn't work, so eventually she told me to go to the web site, and download the latest firmware along with the offline installer. I did, and she put me on hold while it downloaded. The firmware finished first, and when the installer came down, I was still on hold so I ran it.
Oh joy
It actually installed without errors, it just worked. Oh joy, no more mirror
headaches. No, oh nigh unmeasurable bliss. You don't know how happy a "you must
reboot your computer to complete the installation" prompt can make a person
until you have spent four hours beating your head against shoddy software and
over an hour switching between a thick eastern European accent and smooth jazz
hold music.
Rebooting resulted in the predictable. No, not a still broken SC101 NAS box, but a BSOD. Yeah, playing with low level software that emulates SCSI over the network is tricky at the best of times, but who would have thought it would die after the only uneventful install of the day?
No problem, last known good config should get me back. Yeah right, if you buy that you probably also believe Vista is secure. Nope, BSOD there. OK, I was still on hold, how about safe mode. Nope, BSOD. Safe mode command prompt only? BSOD. The box was dead dead dead.
A few minutes later, the helpful lady came back on the line and I explained to her what happened. It installed fine and then BSOD'd, same with safe mode, and the box appeared dead. That is when Netgear have up all hope. The reply sealed the coffin.
"I didn't tell you to install it".
I was floored. I was slowly and painfully told to download the firmware upgrade and the software, and put on hold. What was the next step? Please people, guess? I am rarely at a loss for snappy comebacks, but this was one of them.
"What were you going to tell me to do next" I snapped. "Not install it? Were you about to tell me to install it?". Long long pause.
"Can I put you on hold again sir?", followed by more hold music. A long wait later I was told to "Press F8 when it is booting".
"I already told you it BSODs in safe mode"
"Well sir, we are going to try it in... ummm.... safe mode.... now."
"I told you, it BSODs, it BSODs in safe mode, last known good, and every other option in the boot menu. I tried them all, it is dead."
"Please hold."
Five more minutes passes with me wanting to kill the next jazz musician I see. She came back and said the magic words "Sir, you need to reinstall Windows before we take the next step".
WTF?
Yeah, they just killed my friends box, and told me to reinstall before they
would give me any more aid, the BSODs were my problem now. Please note, they
didn't warn me that data loss could occur or any of the other things they should
have, just a kind suggestion. If I had followed their instructions, I probably
would end up with a dead NAS and complete data loss, not just a dead PC. This is
where lawsuits come from.
I then demanded it to talk to a higher level of tech support, and she tried to dissuade me. I told her to just ask the guy who was standing behind her telling her what to do, and there was a rather uncomfortable pause. She put me on hold for another five minutes, coming back to tell me that they were all busy.
In a far less polite way, I insisted that I wanted to talk to someone competent. Five more minutes of hold later, I was politely told that they were still all busy. I less politely explained that I bricked my machine following their orders, so I expected to talk to competent tech support, and I wanted to talk to them now.
This is when my tormentor somewhat lost her cool and basically told me that she didn't like my attitude, and besides, level two wouldn't talk to me until I reinstalled XP anyway. Great, I was lied to for the last two times, but at least I now knew I was getting screwed and Netgear was not going to help at all.
I thanked her for not helping, and was told to call back after I reinstalled, and given a case number. Over two hours elapsed since I started calling Netgear, and in that time, the SC101 NAS was still screwed up beyond words, the PC was bricked, and I was told off after an hour of the most painful tech support I have dealt with in a long, long time.
In summary, the Netgear Storage Central SC101 NAS is a product that surpasses bad. The software is a nightmare, the product does not work, tech support is incompetent and frustrating, and if they brick your PC, that isn't their problem.
To recommend this product would be well past irresponsible. Plugging your Ethernet cable into an electric outlet could be less painful than installing a Netgear SC101.
Avoid this one like the plague. If my experience of the quality of Netgear's support is anything to go by you should avoid any of its NAS boxes like a multi-drug resistant plague. If it is this bad for one product, it doesn't bode well for others.
Users should beware of the nightmare that is the Storage Central SC101. ?
Bartender's Verdict
Many thanks for a very informative review. This type of behaviour by manufacturer is shocking. As a result, I am pleased to let you know that I will no longer purchase Netgear products. I am in the market for a Wifi print server, that's them off the shortlist then. Many thanks for your timely warning. RNO
Where you went wrong was using a coin to turn to the screw instead of the proper recommended specification flat headed screw driver.
The other big gotcha (if you get it working) is only 1 client can (or could) access the device at once. It retrieves 1 IP address per volume (hence the 2 ip addresses being used). iSCSI done badly.
But tell us how you REALLY feel.
I have to agree with the article. I had an SC101 and it was the most painful and frustrating experience i have ever had in installing a NAS device. I got ri dof it and wnet to a Hawking Tech NAS box. It just plain works. I had a similar experience with Tech support, it was laughable. I too am not a PC novice. AT the time i worked for a major PC manufacturer and had set-up many large networks in ASia which had NAS devices or SAN's connected to them. Netgear SC101 = Utter twaddle.
I feel your pain, Charlie. Seems like every month, I run into the same situation with any number of issues. From dealing with Hospital/Doctor bills, to trying to get a refund from a cancelled flight (don't even ask me about United Airlines), to dealing with changing your address. Its all about maximizing profits for shareholders and good customer service that enhances customer loyalty is a column that is not on anyone's spreadsheet. I recently had a similar experience over the course of 3 months and had documented 4 occassions where they lied to me about payment of a refund. On the last occassion, I educated a gentleman with an eastern accent about what Wire Fraud is and how it is a Federal Felony in this country punishable by fines and jail time. (I later checked with an attorney friend who told me that I was indeed correct in the use of this law - he laughed and said it was brilliant). My problem got resolved in the next 24 hours after dealing with these idiots for 94 days. In a way, I blame whoever invented the spreadsheet (Lotus?) for making it so easy to compare and analyze P&L statements. Without that, it wouldn't be so easy to see that you can save $1500/year by outsourcing your customer support and implementing policies that enhance your profit making instead of your customers satisfaction with your product. Never mind the $8,000,000 the marketing department has to spend to convince the public your products are still worth buying - Marketing always has a big budget - its just a part of business. Mike G. Oberlin, OH
I feel for you my friend, i am surprised you kept your cool for so long. I wish they would offer an option to silence the crap they play down telephone lines, it is unbearable. Netgear have long lost me as a customer, after their shoddy router died and they basically told me to f off.
I've had this with a number of firmware patching applications and programmers now - I've learned that if the BSOD's start - its time to take out the ERD Commander CD, boot up, attach to windows and remove the driver safely. I feel your pain, I really do - but as it stands, the firmware update and flasher drivers seem to be very windows version specific - woo hoo :/
My own unpleasant experience was with the SC101's newer sibling, the SC101T. Just as frustrating, though no amusing tech-support experience since I never call them: I don't like the resulting elevated blood-pressure. Anyway, just to add that the SC101T (likely both units) uses a proprietary file-system. Somewhat illogical on a RAID 1-capable device, IMO: RAID 1 implies that the data is important to the user. A proprietary file system, on the other hand, implies the data will not be recoverable should the device fail. There is a command-line recovery utility, true. But I couldn't get to the point of testing if it works. And having used every other command-line tool Netgear provided trying to make the damned thing work and seen the quality (rather, the lack of) of their software engineering, I frankly don't expect the recovery utility will work well, if at all. Having recommended the SC101T, based on specs, to a friend is the most embarrassing event of my life I can recall right now. Avoid like the plague.
just as an fyi...you can use the UBCD for window to boot to a prewindows inviroment...if nothing else to recover your data...err friends data... It is one of my best tricks for computers...my clients think it is a miracle... anyhow you can fix the registry that way or just get the data off...I hope that makes the experience at least somewhat easier to fix. Thank you for issuing the warning ... I will spread the word to my fellow techs, sorry you and your friend had to go through that though.
I feel your pain. I've been there. Hours lost on a bad product. And who can you yell at? The developers, engineers, and management that brought the product to market are those that would truly benefit from a good verbal lashing but are safely hidden from public view. Corel's PaintShop Pro XI, Vole's Vista (and now Server 2008's GUI interface), LSI Logic's MegaRaid management software, and some of the Dell managed switches: they've all got their fair share of major issues. How do these things get released to market in their current (and slightly broken) state?
I've never had a problem with my toaster, installation was pretty easy and I had no trouble getting the software installed. May I say - you just had bad luck when you tried?
So you are saying that this product isn't recommended?
That thing looks like a toaster! Sorry your friend's system ended up toast. NetGear's support is a red herring. What I resent, even from Microsoft, is that support nearly always tells you to do a format and re-install. Sometimes, that is not an option. You'd rather slave the drives in another computer. Bios may help you boot ONLY from CD-ROM, maybe a repair could be done to XP installation. Here's a good thread: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html and there's www.bootdisk.com I also saw a reference to format c: \s that only affect the OS. Scared of that one. If all else fails, give it the Ron Jeremy treatment, or David Beckham kick. Here's to NetGear's dry-heaving the crappers!
we tried selling these evil devices in our store. we tried one out to how well it worked and were all disgusted when it stared killing PCs on our network that had the SC101 software installed. Also we needed 3 people pulling on the drives and chassis to get the hard drives back out. Evil stuff. Need less to say we sent them all back to the distie for a credit and moved onto selling ssomething else, anything else......
I wanted to use of these boxes as well, but I did a search of the internet before purchase (as I do now for ALL technology purchases, as you can't trust what ANY manufacturer tells you anymore) I found NOTHING but bad reviews for this POS from NetGear. And that was over a year ago. Sorry you lost your PC, but read up on things like this before you run into Best Buy and believe what is written on a box.
Woah, this is the harshest review of anything that I have ever read in my life Having worked for Xbox360 tech support, I know how painfully shitty networking tech support can be (Lots of times I had to explain the customers how to forward ports or about whitelisting MAC addresses because the router's tech support rep wouldn't know how to). But this is beyond belief. Really, at times I could give the stupidest of replies (usually when I wanted to get home) but this lady had overtaken them all. I would go for class action lawsuit.
Hiya Charlie, I feel for you, been there, done that, returned the toaster to whence it came with a kind note to remove said piece of not-even-close-to-working hardware from their catalog, which they did (I wasn't the first or most vocal returnee that day). No idea how THAT could ever slip through any sort of QC.
It took me FOUR MONTHS to get my broadcom-based motorola PC850 bluetooth dongle to work in Vista. In the end, the trick was to avoid Motorola & broadcom software & just download the bluetooth stack from IOGear. Eh? Yup, that's right.. & expect nothing from Broadcom or Motorola, nothing but contempt for your sorry lot, for SUGGESTING their stuff ought to work. But anyway, I do have a NAS from IOGear, the 200GB Boss, first try booting it up sounded a lot like this story but it turned out the box was merely dead. One little phone call, they gracefully provided a RMA number & I had a working box within only 1 month. Got it installed within 15 minutes. I NEVER got the Linux source code those lying swine promised that they would reveal in the GPL, but that's okay. I'm thinking of upgrading to LaCie big ethernet disk & extract that 200GB drive for my Zenith DVD player.
I can heartily recommend the D-Link DNS-323 as an alternative. I use this little device with 2 WD 1TB SATA drives in a RAID1 configuration at work. The embedded Linux can easily be hacked to open up NFS, ssh and rsync. I keep mine at work and back up my home machine to it at night over my DSL connection, thus ensuring an off-site back up. As a bonus, it has the mt-daapd music server so I can listen to my entire 180+GB music collection at work.
I loved your article, but I can report that I use 8 of these devices on my home network, running XP SP2. Each of the 8 devices runs Mirrored Drives, and yes I have had the experience you have had, but they have been stable for the last 14 months on this network. They cost so little, that you get the support you pay for. The software is flakly, the tech support is a joke, and none of the available forums help in any way. Personally I would change my PC for one with SATA RAID capability, and put 4 x 750GB Drives in 2 x RAID1 Mirrors, and dump these SC101. That is my next move, however, Do take a little peak at the Buffalo Units, they seem to get nothing but good reviews, they cost a lot more, but you do seem to get better support. PS, I have got these units also working with a VISTA (non-SP1) system, and one trick is rather than install the SC101 software on to every computer on a network, use the DRIVE SHARE capability to both XP and VISTA from a single PC, it works very well, and makes your installation much simple, and only risks as single PC rather than a whole network.
I got my SC101 for free as part of a special offer, I STILL felt ripped off when I tried to use it! I did manage to get it working properly but soon worked out that it was simply a waste of electricity....
Yeah, it's not great... Also on the list of features (when it's working 'properly') is diabolical performance, a lack of support for non Windows OS's and a tendancy to 'forget' the mirrors out of the blue even when things were previously working. The incompetent tech support isn't restricted to the SC101. So have we finally found something you'd recommend less than Vista? D
Unfortunately I'm not shocked. Netgear has to compete with the likes of Linksys, whose support is so miserable that even the Indian consumers would prefer American or European call centers, and whose hardware dependability makes Linksys the Lucas Electrics of the networking appliance world and a laughable scourge on the good name of Cisco. The margins are just too thin for the consumer networking gadgets. How to compete? Cheap support, rushed engineering and non-existent QA, mediocre documentation, and shaving pennies on parts too. Lotsa' luck.
I can so agree with you, Netgear sucks big time, I have had so many problems with setting up their hardware on my home networking, I have had to RMA 2 of my 3 pc cards and my Netgear router over the space of 2 months, because of overheating. The Software is badly written and trying to talk to there Overseas no-help desk just gets exsasperating,eventually I stuck it all in the bin (£207) and got hardware that does what it is surposed to eg WORK, I will never waste my time/money on that company again.
This is the funniest post I ever saw on Teh Inq! Period! I really want to know how it ends.
You could sell that story to Stephen King. I don't remember the last time I've heard of (or experienced) such a horror story. I really feel bad for you and your friend. Rest assured, I will be passing on the lesson I learned from your experience - DO NOT patronize Netgear. I have to assume that "tech support" for all of their products is just as bad - as well as their not wanting to take responsibility for the damage done by their faulty products. BTW, I like your Bartender's Verdict LOL P.S. I am in the market for a new router. I have used Linksys for years, but wanted to try something else next time. I was going to try Netgear, but not after reading this article. I'll be doing some more research and trying out a different brand. I believe in supporting a company that will be there for me if/when I need them.
I'm willing to bet you've got bad RAM installed. The first flag to me is when you said the software you downloaded was corrupt. It could also cause all kinds of abnormalities when trying to install/run the software (and it's very easy to imagine this might occur if you try to do some low-level or command line work on the NAS and PC with faulty RAM). I haven't got this NAS, nor do I work for Netgear, but since everything you tried was from this specific machine I would be suspicious of it. Anyway, please let us know what a few bouts of Memtest tells ya.
With your experiance, you should know better than to install any BS-oftware that comes with a device. Get a QNAP TS-109, 209 or 409 pro and configure it in the web interface.
Interesting rant! and a story i''m sure many will empathise with, oh for the day when you can speak to someone who actually listens to your problem In all of the many times I've needed support for products as an IT admin for my office, telephone tech support is the last place i'd recommend. period. why do we pay for these services?! TBH I had to ring in on a dell warranty recently for a backup unit, expecting the same treatment...but they skipped straight to the lets replace the unit, rather than the extensive testing / downloading updates / rebooting over the phone :)
Troubleshooting when the SC101/SC101T Storage Central cannot create a mirror http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101628.asp
Charlie, I don't care what anyone else may say or think. I want to thank you for an accurate and representative end-user experience with an industry-representative product. If I had space, I would entertain you with a story about the time I spent Christmas eve and Day, and New Year's eve and Day (and all the days in-between) trying to get a pair of RAID-5 servers online. Good job on the article. - The Garret
FreeNAS + iSCSI, a bit more expensive (requires a pc, via epia boards with CF cards are a good solution) but you won't have problems with "but does it support xyz" or "the driver is borked". Why are Netgear trying to re-invent the wheel, why make some strange driver when iSCSI is already a standard with interfaces available from MS to get it working. Damage.Inc
This a a classic. Incompetent tech support meets arrogant end-user. It's a shame you bricked your friend's computer. Here's a little nugget of wisdom I've learned from 23 years of building and fixing computers for a living: "If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it."
Strange. Been running one for over a year. Never had a problem. Setup Easy, Updates Easy, Performance always good.
...don't get Charlie round to do your installations.
you call the support line lady a useless noob yet you didnt think to remove both drives and reformat them? formatting the drives and readding them to the nas would have solved your error yeah your a real whizz
Well, I do not exactly share the same experience with my unit. Actually, mine works like a charm. I have a 80GB and a 300GB platter in there. The 80GB one is mirrored on both drives, the remaining 220GB is not. Only thing I found tricky is in advanced configuration you have to share the device to make it viewable on all devices connected to the network. so long...
Used to be a great product but some systems find it hard to see the drives and where are the 64bit vista drivers....
I got one of these toasters via freecycle. Just a massive pile of crap I ended up taking the hd's I got with it and built a WHS instead far quicker than trying to argue with the **** software Netgear supply with the sc10. Why use propierty software and hardware for a NAS that screws everything up and then STILL sell the damn thing
I used to like Netgear, many years ago. I stopped buying their stuff after needing to talk to their sick joke of "tech support." To be honest, I'm surprised you got someone who even vaguely understood what you were asking her...
chaonatic - your talking out of your behind. Memory is the LAST thing that's likely to cause any problem on a PC. Memory is the most reliable part of ANY PC. A corrupted d/l is far, far more likely due to packet loss on the connection bonehead. With tech advice like yours YOU should be working for Netgear.
1. I am a tier 2 tech support rep for a financial aid company. 2. I have totally seen my incompetent reps do this to someone and even BORK the excellent advice I tell them to repeat to the customer verbatim. 3. I am truly sorry for your luck... 4. THANKS FOR THE LAUGHS PS my favorite line from my favorite sunday morning cartoon: "dogbert tech support, how may I abuse you" better luck next time !?
we stopped using netgear stuff a while ago. It pays to use cisco switches and routers for a reason. However, I do use a couple of buffalo terrastations in RAID 5 adn they are a dream to set up. They also interface with your domain quite well and have an intuitive admin screen.
i've got 3 of these at home, one using 2 mirrored 500gig drives and 2 with two 500gig drives, all 3 are striped (don't ask why... it just worked out that way...). I also run 6 of them at work and all of them work flawlessly. yes, the software is pretty crap, but once they are working, you leave them alone and they are rock stable.
I had the exact experience with the sc101. I did manage to fix it with out reformating. It adds an entry to each drive device listed in the registry I deleted these entries and remove the netgear virus. It is a POS!!
I had to buy one of these for a customer because local shops didn't have any NAS that I had used and liked before. Boy is it bizarre. Thankfully I got it working, albeit in a very ugly way that I'm not confident will keep working, but I'll definitely never buy another.
http://code.google.com/p/sc101-nbd/ I have it running onto a Ubuntu box and it works like a charm. Best thing is since I got it for free via a Netgear promo when buying a switch I can stick to my free-as-in-beer principles!
Insert WinXP CD, boot from it, press R for repair windows. Connect to ebay, offload the netgear :) I'm thinking it might have issues with 500GB drives, which I didn't even know they made in IDE variants incidentally.. And I would not be surprised the BSOD would have to do with some propriety Dell nonsense on that laptop.
Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. I loaded mine up with a couple of 750GB drives about 6 months ago, and got it going in about 20 minutes. It's performed flawlessly ever since, home to weekly automated image backups, music and video, and all that stuff that was relegated to CD's to save internal drive space. One of those devices that, if it's not actually on your desk where you can see it, you forget you even have! The software could use a polish, but it's no SonicStage. 7.5/10.
Well, congratz NetGear. You've just lost some business. People like me not only decide what our organization will buy, but also are the guys that people ask before they buy something or need a solution to a problem. "Uhh yeah, go for Linksys or D-link. Avoid Netgear ANYTHING like a plague.
Ah yes, another "expert" who knows it all. First you buy drives that are not on the supported list -- probably because they had more capacity than drives listed as supported, right? I guess you haven't looked at many drives lately but lower capacity ones are often physically thinner than higher capacity ones. Fewer platters, thinner profile. Trying to exceed specs is one thing but bitching when your assumptions crash and burn? Yep, a great start. Eventually you manage to destroy your poor friend's PC to the point that it BSODs but you obviously have no idea how to fix it. There are many ways you can get access to a drive without having to boot from it, even if it is NTFS. Find the offending device driver and rename the file. If you really were a "professional" you'd have ERD Commander which would even let you roll back the machine via XP's System Restore. Perhaps your biggest mistake though is that you chose a home NAS system that requires software to be installed on PCs attached to the network. So, although you obviously have little idea about PCs or home NAS, we do agree on one thing. The Netgear product is a POS.
I know how you feel, to make things worse I used to work for Customer Care for a local cell phone company. I used to know the ins and outs of the company and really know my shit! Well, if I had a problem I couldn't help my self and I had to make sure another call center answered when I had a problem as none of my fellow co-workers answered. This was frustrating, to an extent just to make sure that we weren't "helping" each other. Well what makes things worse is when I got another call center no one was as well trained as my co-workers at my call center and they were so dumb, as I would tell them what my exact problem was and identify who I was and they should have skipped steps to a certain point which they would not and when they did not know how to do what they were supposed to do they would not listen to what I would tell them to! I would then ask for their super visor and they would avoid it. Before they did that I would as for their info so I could report them for being a negligent care agent and I would report that info to my supervisor, ya they were screwed at that point. It still pisses me off at this point knowing that there are stupid people trying to do simple tasks and ignore their obvious simple training and don't do their jobs as their supposed to and piss everyone off. I know the rules and how everything is supposed to be done and if someone doesn't follow procedure I ask for a supervisor and report every action that the agent did wrong and before I'm put on hold I hear a lecture start, but some agents are so ignorant they think they are smarter than the rest of the world. What I'm trying to say is if the agent is giving you trouble, ask for a supervisor and insist on it, one thing is when you hear the recording say "this call may be recorded for training or quality assurance reasons" its true, and where I was working if you said "you fail at your job and are not helping me how I want you to" you failed your qa review and about every 10 calls was reviewed.
Okay so the support was poor, I can definitely agree with that (and have worked in Support for multiple large companies and understand how abysmal the experinece can be). But after reading the article I have to say that the author gives the impression that he isn't as "tech savvy" as he claims, and because of this he was going to find fault in everything to cover this up. He starts by titling the article "...kills my PCs", when it was only one PC he was working with. He then starts the article by complaining about inserting drives, (which I've done in my SC101 many times without an issue) and doesn't even seem to think that there might either be an issue with the drives or that specific units chassic (frame bent slightly maybe?) From there he complains about a short ethernet cable which stops his work for the day, which is just plain whining since short cables are pretty normal in any networking product these days. After this he complains about the "bad download", which works later and shows us/him that it isn't a server-side corrupted file (which would be the only valid complaint for this problem). So if he had tried the download again originally (which is the next reasonable step from a tech support perspective), he wouldn't have had this to complain about. From there he goes on and on until he reaches his BSOD, which he doesn't know how to recover from, even though he has all of this "tech knowledge". Also throughout the article he shows that he doesn't really understand the difference between a NAS and a SAN, which seems to be what he really wanted (i.e. NAS) So in the end the SC101 may have it's issues, but the authors lack of understanding only made his problems worse.
Hello When I went looking for a cheap NAS, this one seemed to fit the bill. As you described, this is the biggest piece of shit!!! One thing I have noticed, is that it has a terrible time with Wifi. Everytime I link to this device hard wire, it works. It doesn't work good but it works. However to attach and use with a wireless client is more than a headache. This is for me the WORST device I have ever owned!!!
its the biggest peice of shite i've ever dealt with.
I wish I had seen this before I bought Netgear SC101. In order for mine to work I had to use DHCP and issue the thing 4 IP's 2 per drive. And I've experienced the same pain it crashes my laptop so I don't use it there anymore but it works fine on my desktop. But to correct "Aint No NAS" 2 clients can access a device at once. Netgear is off my lists.
I'm also one not soo happy owner of two of these ... things... Install the drivers on a Vista PC and upgrade to SP1. If you uninstall the drivers you'll get BSOD just like yours and it's no way to fix it without a reinstalltion of PC. The installation also affect USB storage in a weird way, harddrives shos up in Device Manager but no where else!?! The drivers seems to do bad things to Windows subsystem for storage handling with the ZSAN driver. Well, now my SC101s stands in a bookshelf as a reminder that never ever buy a product from Netgear again.
if your looking for somthing in the same catagory- i like my dns- 323 & it can be hacked to do many spifffy things easily. very very stable its the only D-link product that wasnt garbage.(cameras,routers,lancards)