Customer Reviews

NETGEAR Stora 2-Bay 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage MS2110

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

What's not to love about the Netgear Stora? On description alone, this sounds like a great product for home users to back up their computers and store their music and picture libraries. Perfect, right?

Although this is marketed for the non-technical user, after my experiences, I don't thing Grandma would ever figure this one out.

When I first installed the Stora I thought everything was going to work just like indicated. I had the stora set up, registered, password created, and had even added a couple of music files to test it out. Music was streaming perfectly. Then.. I tried to go online to read the owners manual and that is where the fun began. I found when the Stora was turned on that it hijacked my router and blocked Internet access from any other device in the house. Even computers that had never even accessed the Stora or had the Stora desktop applications installed were blocked as well as my squeezebox.

I turned off the Stora and cleared the cookies from my computers and restarted them, and I was able to get back onto the Internet. Then I turned the Stora on and it immediately blocked Internet access. I worked for a few hours on my own trying to diagnose the problem and find a workaround. Having no luck, I contacted technical support.

I found that Netgear surprisingly had 24/7 technical support, which was excellent at 2:30 am, except for the forty minutes of hold time. The first tech support specialist was a joy to work with. He was patient beyond what could be expected of saints. He went through every troubleshooting idea he could come up with. After spending two hours with me, at my suggestion he agreed I should try to assign an IP address to the Stora rather than allowing my router to auto-assign an IP address. I knew the IP address should be along the lines of 192.168.1.1xx but the tech support specialist told me to set it to 192.168.1.1, and against my better judgement, I put that in. At that point, my router decided he'd had enough and flipped out and kept flashing lights non-stop. My Internet AND Stora access were blocked. The tech support specialist set up a time for a higher level tech support specialist to call me back, and right on schedule I was contacted by Patrick. Patrick quickly ran through the notes and tried a few more things to help me, but finally ascertained that he couldn't fix the problem and suggested I either RMA it or return it to Amazon. He also understood that the Stora and the last tech support specialist made the problem worse so he tried to help me get my network working again even after we had taken the Stora off of the network. It didn't work, but I did appreciate his willingness to help.

The technical support specialists we talked to never addressed the issue of a possible hardware conflict, such as my router, but I got to thinking that might be the problem. We run a home business and in a fret of worry about not being able to print out and access tomorrows business I had my husband run to Sam's Club and purchase a new router. I did a system restore on all of the computers in the house to three days prior (and made sure the Stora was not connected in any way to my network, lol). I then installed the new router and my network was resurrected.

That got me to thinking.. maybe my router was not compatible with the Stora. Making a leap of faith I printed out tomorrows business and reconnected the Stora. Like magic, I did not get kicked off the Internet. The Stora was still working. I uploaded dozens of albums to the Stora and started streaming music around the house. I finally figured out that my router was incompatible with the Stora. Others on forums have complained that the Stora running blocks their http access. I would suspect that the problem lies in the router, how it assigns IP addresses, and that interacts with the Stora.

I don't feel that this product was ready for prime time. I did some backups, but found they did not create what I consider to be a mirror backup. I couldn't scroll through the hierarchy of drives and files like on my Seagate replica, but instead it's the type of backup you would use to restore a system. I also found the backup on this product to be incredibly slow compared to other competing products I've used.

I still like using it for streaming music and will probably add another 1TB drive to safeguard my files, but I don't know if the average person would persist through the many hours it took me to get this working correctly.

My other complaint is that the PDF user manual was "included" on the setup CD, but in fact it needed to be online to read. In other words, when they say the user manual is on CD, you have to be connected to the Internet to read the manual at their web site. It's not a stand alone PDF accessible straight from the CD. That REALLY frustrated me when I was having problems.

One more complaint, if the music folder is a folder within a folder it won't play. For example, if you have eight Michael Jackson albums contained within a folder called "Michael Jackson" and click "autoplay" it won't play any music. You have to manually drill down to get to the album you want.

Some reviewers have reported having to open ports on their firewall. I suppose experiences will vary. I set up my Stora using a Windows 7 64-bit operating system with Windows firewall and MSSE. I never had to adjust anything to complete the setup and my network is still secured. Perhaps there are compatibility factors that cause workarounds like disabling your firewall or opening ports.

I haven't yet set up the remote access free trial, but plan to give it a try once I have more loaded onto the Stora. I'll update my review and experiences after I try it out.

I hope that Netgear improves the Stora software because it has a lot of potential, but in it's current state it has basic functionality, basic storage, basic backup, with remote and network access. With better firmware and software, this product could be a must-have.

Pros:
Inexpensive
90 days free phone support
3 year warranty parts & labor
1TB storage
Remote access for only $20 per year
Ability to add another 3.5" SATA drive and utilize RAID feature
No need to install the desktop apps on additional computers, just access it's assigned IP on your network (192.168.1.?)
Can use this as a network printer server by connecting the printer through USB
File upload is very easy - just drag and drop

Cons:
Mirror backup is not a mirror- it's just a backup
Incompatibility with some routers
Folder management is pretty basic
Slow backups
I feel the 90 day free phone support should be longer, at least six months

I was very impressed with the Stora's specs and performance when I first bought it. However I have discovered a serious issue with it. To setup and administrate this device you are required to use a web based administration interface hosted on a Netgear affiliated third party server on the Internet. To emphasize, this interface is not on the local Stora device. It is on a remote Internet server which you have no control over. In order to use this interface you must open several ports in your firewall which exposes your network to security risks from the Internet. Over the next few days after configuring the Stora if you watch the network traffic coming from the Stora, you will see that it will attempt to communicate with a couple different Internet servers. I would assume that they are Netgear's or the third party's servers. But why would the Stora need to "Phone Home" on such a frequent basis, or any for that matter? Worse still, if you lock down those ports after the initial setup to stop the Stora from accessing the Internet on it's own, and then reopen them to administrate the device at a later date, your login id will no longer be a valid account associated with your Stora on their remote server and you will no longer be able to change the setup on the local Stora device that you own.

Suppose that does not represent a problem for how you wish to use the device. There is another aspect to consider. What will happen when Netgear end of lifes the Stora and takes down their servers? Will you be able to login to the device anymore? That is a question I can't see a positive answer for. I guess Netgear expects that the user would just dispose of the Stora and buy another of their NAS products. I know I won't.

I hope that Netgear decides to fix this issue because if it were not for this issue I would have only praise for this device and for Netgear. If they don't, then I will give one of their competitors my future business, including replacing this device in the near future.

I used to own the HP MediaSmart Home Server and loved the idea of scalable home storage, but a (since corrected) data corruption bug had me send it back to HP. I was tempted to reinvest in the unit since the problem was corrected, but I became very aware of my home electric usage and didn't like the fact that it sucked 40W at idle 24/7. Storage appliances should be energy efficient if always-on!

That's why I was intrigued by the Stora. It's a simpler, though not quite as robust solution that does exactly what I want and, as it turns out, draws about a quarter of the electricity of the MediaSmart at idle (and is documented to have a sleep mode besides).

All of this, plus it's only $200, which is much less than the MediaSmart's $400-600 price tag and isn't too much more than some non-network ready external hard drives of similar size!

As for my impression of the capabilities of the Stora, for me, I don't need a lot of frills in a NAS, I mainly want a lot of storage for all the iTunes video I buy and I want the ability to back it up, since I amassed about $1,000 worth of digital media that I don't want to lose.

In this regard, the Stora delivers! 1 TB is a decent amount of space, and having your content automatically backed up is as simple as adding any old 1 TB drive to the second hot-swappable bay. You can add an additional disk via USB and the performance of the Stora is good enough to be the source of my iTunes library and stream video and music over my wireless network to my Apple TV/computer with no skipping.

The Stora was also instantly recognized by iTunes on my computer (shared playlist) and my PS3 (video share) with no effort on my part! For my purposes I need to have the Stora be the source of my iTunes library vs. just having that shared playlist (so I can also stream video/use an Airport Express' speakers, etc.), but it's nice to know the feature works effortlessly.

The Stora also offers some value-added capability that some may find compelling. It's possible to use it as a source for computer backups, including Time Machine compatibility for we Mac users, you can enable FTP access locally and/or over the internet, and if you pay for a subscription service, you have the ability to do things like have your photos automatically added to Facebook. However, since I use iPhoto to do the same thing for free, I'm not really sold on the value of such a service.

I do have a few gripes with the unit, however, and they're worth considering both as part of your purchasing decision, and in case you run into the same problems I did.

First, the setup program is currently incompatible with Airport Extreme routers (because of lack of UPnP?). The installer doesn't give any user feedback so it's difficult to tell what's happening, but basically it has trouble finding the Stora.

Because of this quirk, I spent an hour on the phone with a not-so-helpful support rep before I ended up suggesting that we try to access the Stora by IP address to see if we can set it up that way, which, luckily, it turns out you can. For those wondering, to determine the IP address of the Stora if you have an Airport Extreme, you need to go to "Airport Utility" then select your router, click the "Wireless Clients" label to see detailed information, then lookup the Stora under DHCP clients. Once you have the IP address, you can type it into your browser and run setup on the unit.

A second gripe is that authentication happens through Netgear's servers if you want to reach the administration pages of your router. This isn't a problem if you're just accessing the NAS on your local network (despite what some other reviewers have claimed), but it is an issue if you want to change the unit's settings. You have to rely on Netgear to maintain their servers indefinitely or there may be problems tweaking the units in the future.

Lastly, the drives in the Stora are apparently formatted with some kind of proprietary file format... UPDATE/CORRECTION: I've been informed that the file format is simply XFS, so if your Stora fails, getting data off the drives may be complicated for non-Linux users, but not impossible.

All in all, however, the Stora is a great, relatively energy-efficient home storage solution that gets the job done capably, but may require a little bit of technical knowhow for fringe situations. I'd recommend it, despite its limitations.

One star ONLY because there are no zero and negative ratings.

I purchased this product today (5/7/2011) and installed two 2 terabyte hard drives. When I was setting user accounts, I received a message saying "Maximum Accounts Exceeded" when I tried to enter four users. I called the tech support, and after being placed on hold for 25 minutes I was told that I had to BUY A SUBSCRIPTION to register more than three users.

I asked them why that is not mentioned ANYWHERE ON THE BOX, and they replied "we do not know what is on the box". I told them that what they were doing was bait and switch, which is illegal in the USA. I asked to talk to a manager and was put on hold for another 20 minutes only to be told that "there are no supervisors available." After this they hung up on me.

I tried calling technical support back SIX TIMES, each time being put on hold for a MINIMUM of 30 minutes, and each time was disconnected. On my final attempt to contact technical support, the engineer asked for the serial number of the device. When I gave them the number, I was told "This device was built in 2009, you will have to send us proof that you purchased the device today in order to get free support."

I asked "are you calling me a liar?" They said "No, we are not calling you a liar" then they repeated that I had to provide proof that I purchased the device today. After some arguing, and again asking for a supervisor, I was put on hold, then disconnected.

I WILL NEVER BUY A NETGEAR PRODUCT AGAIN - NEVER!

This product was wonderful for the first 3 months. It did almost everything it said it would:

- Easy hardware setup
- Easy network connectivity
- Simple device connectivity (Linux, OSX, and Windows all worked flawlessly)

3 months later I tried to connect and I see a blue light flashing repeatedly. I google and and it appears to be a bad device. I'm on the phone with tech support and of course I'm routed to an Indian support person who I have a very difficult time understanding. I know he's doing his best to try and help but he's following a script.

From the beginning of our call this is what I've said:

"Hello. I have a Netgear Stora 1TB device that is not working. The blue light is flashing intermittently. The machine is on and I am only able to ping the machine. I am unable to logon to the machine via URL by IP address, unable to login by URL hostname, unable to use mystora.com, unable to do a network share via windows or samba. I've followed the reset commands, unplugged, everything suggested in the stora forums."

He says, "can you try and ping the device." My answer "yes."
He says, "can you try to logon using the mystora.com URL", I answer no.
He says, "can you try logging on via windows share."

Terrible tech support experience.

The device is a very affordable home NAS system for $189 (purchased 6/25/2010). However it's frustrating that Netgear tech support has been so unresponsive and unhelpful. I'm trying to do a return or exchange and unable to. Tech support continues to put me on hold and eventually will hang up on me. I've left my contact information and they have not called me back.

Has anyone else experienced this? I really like Netgear products however this storage device doesn't seem to hold up very well over a matter of a few months. Buyer beware. I've lost 3months worth of data that is unrecoverable even when trying to mount the drive on a separate linux PC.

My initial install went well and I even backed up my system on to it successfully. The next day, when I booted the system, I couldn't get to the device and couldn't even get to the internet. In fact, none of the other computers on the network could get to the internet either unless I turned the Netgear device off and rebooted the router. Their technical support was worthless. I tried to uninstall and reinstall but that was a catch-22. You couldn't reinstall even after the uninstall because it said it was already there. Their function to reset it came back and said it couldn't reset it because it wasn't there. I gave up and took it back.

Then the real problems started. Every time I boot my machine, it still tries to get to 10.0.0.1 (the Netgear device) and blocks me from the internet. If I manually modify the registry to make 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.6 go away and replace them with my router's IP, I can get things to work until I reboot and find that the registry is again modified back to 10.0.0.1 and I have to go through the whole thing again. Agian, their Technical Support was worthless.

Also, during the process, I learned the following from their support line:
1. You cannot reformat the drive. It runs Linux but doesn't let you the user get to the OS.
2. You cannot defragment the drive.
3. You cannot change the password on the drive without losing everything on the drive.

This product is not ready for prime time. Staty away from it!

This product requires internet access to set up, change passwords and add accounts. It is equivalent to running an unmanaged webserver on your home network with all of your data on it and also handing out the password to a few companies for them to manage/mismanage as they see fit. Ridiculous. If this was detailed in the product description no one would ever get duped into buying it. On top of that, once I did get it finally set up and set firewall rules to prevent it from accessing the internet, it performed horribly. I have a mac and a windows 7 machine. The network drive is intermittent at best. It appears and disappears randomly and is ridiculously sluggish. I'm going to buy something else and just transfer the hard drives out of this one. What a piece of crap.

I bought a Netgear Stora soon after release to replace a problematic MediaSmart ex745 server. I was looking for a RAID-1 solution, and I've had good luck with Netgear products, so I bought the unit without reading reviews. This was a mistake, and I'm here to warn others against purchasing this product.

First, some of the advertised features are non-existant (confirmed by Netgear/Axentra). Here are a few of them:

1. The "demo" video on the Netgear site says the unit will power-down when not in use, thereby making it a "green" solution. The problem is, this feature doesn't exist!

2. The box lists Windows, OSX, and Linux/UNIX as supported OSs. It has been confirmed that Linux/UNIX is, in fact, not supported.

3. The documentation lists "Sychronize" and "Backup" modes for the Desktop Mirror software (used for backups). However, "sychronize" is not an option with the Stora...and the "backup" mode does not work as described by the documentation (the documentation describes it as "mirroring").

4. The Stora is advertised (both on the Netgear site and the documentation) as having the functionality of backing up computers remotely over the internet (i.e. backing up data on your laptop when you are on vacation). This is not the case, backups can only be completed while on a network local to the Stora.

5. Desktop Mirror has know issues (see the Axentra forums for more information) where data is not correctly backed up.

Furthermore, the Stora _required_ an internet connection to function. This is not a standard NAS. To quote a Netgear employee on the Stora forums: "without an internet connection, you lose the ability to create accounts, modify your HipServ name, or access the device remotely."

That's insane. So if Netgear or Axentra decide to stop supporting the Stora...which I imagine will happen pretty quick, since it was obviously rushed to market...you are left with an expensive paperweight.

Finally, you can only create 3 user accounts on the system. Additional accounts require the premium services option, which costs an additional ammount per year.

Overall, I am frustrated and dissapointed in this product. It's a mess. I suggest anybody considering buying a Stora do their own research...visit the official forums and check out the comments there...before buying.

I bought this at BestBuy because it was on sale. I should have thought twice when I saw the warning that I couldn't return the product after 14 days. I guess Best Buy deals with a lot of returns on this product.

The bottom line: NetGear is deliberately designing poor customer experiences and limiting their tech documentation so they can charge you $69 bucks for their tech support plan.

Here's what happened:

It did not work out of the box. No surprise there. What was crazy is that the set-up kept sending me to a dead-end screen that said, "Before you go to the next screen, be sure your firewall settings are correct. There was no "Next" and no indication that there was a problem, just instructions for how to proceed. I kept updating the firewall settings as indicated. Again, I reached the dead-end screen with no next button, and no indication that there actually was a problem and what it might be.

I called technical support that weekend, but I kept running out of time. The registration process was very detailed, and even after asking for all your information, the support rep seemed to need it all over again. Why can't they pull up my profile like I do? After a few early tries of 30-60 minutes each, I had to put this home project aside.

I called back at the beginning of the year, and the support reps told me that my 90 days of free support had expired. My options were: a) 1 incident for $36 or 6 months for $69. The support rep had the gall to tell me that the single incident was for 30 minutes only and he didn't think they could troubleshoot a Stora set-up in less than 30 minutes. If the pros can't handle it in less than 30 minutes, how are consumers supposed to handle it? And why are they charging for phone support that they know is going to take 30 minutes or more out of the box? $69 is more than half the price of the product!

I know people at Netgear. I've worked with them as a business partner, so there is some brand loyalty there. However, I've been burned too many times as a consumer to trust them for a major purchase again.

Updated 11/26/2011

When I originally wrote this review, I had given the Stora only 2 stars because of the major issues it had and that they were so prevalent throughout the user community. Today, I am raising my rating to 4 star and am no longer negative on the product so far as my own usage goes. All of the issues as far as I am concerned have now been resolved, the firmware is robust, and the folks at Axentra now have things moving in the right direction.

1. Robust firmware. When I purchased a year and a half ago, the firmware was buggy. It had not bitten me until 6 months later, but it did happen to me once. Since then, the firmware updates continued, and for the past 9 months, my unit has not had one hiccup - it's been rock solid.

2. Enhancements. Axentra added torrent support, JBOD (only offered RAID for two drives previously), more as far as integration with iDevices.

3. Elimination of the $20 annual subscription fee. Earlier this week, it was announced that the $20 annual fee for Premium Subscription was replaced by a one time $9.99 fee for life. All current subscribers were immediately given the lifetime subscription. This provides all of the functionality which was previously only available with annual renewal. Most recently "MySync" has been added - which provides synchronization to your Stora whenever/however you have an internet connection using a dropbox methodology. My hope, which I've already suggested to Axentra/Netgear is that they go the final step and eliminate the one time $9.99 fee and just roll it into the price of the product.

In any case, today, the Stora is the product which was originally advertised. For a home-based media server and backup solution, it does the job.