NETGEAR SC101TNA Storage Central Turbo

by Netgear

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.9 x 5.8 inches ; 6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000O8KHTC
• Item model number: SC101TNA
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The NETGEAR SC101T Storage Central Turbo offers: A flexible, upgradeable way to store and share digital information over a network. Room for up to two SATA hard drives. High-speed Gigabit Ethernet connection for quick data access.

Uniquely customizable, and about the size of a small shoe box, the NETGEAR SC101T Storage Central Turbo is a flexible, upgradeable way to store music, photos and videos, while having the power to access them at Gigabit speeds.

There is room for two hard drives in the SC101T. View larger.

When you need more space, simply upgrade the hard drive. View larger.

To get started, simply insert one or two 3.5-inch SATA drives of any capacity into the Storage Central Turbo, connect it to any router or switch, and the Smart Wizard takes care of the configuration.

This burly device functions just like the local disk drive that you already recognize. The SC101T is accessible from any network computer, but unlike most local disk drives, you won't have to waste the time or money associated with establishing a dedicated PC. And for peace of mind, NETGEAR has built an advanced mirroring backup system into the Storage Central Turbo, and has also included synchronization software that protects against data loss.

With the wave of digital media just building steam, it is hard to predict the amount of data storage one will require. Yet, one thing is certain, your need for more storage is only going to increase. The Storage Central Turbo device is built to keep pace as your storage needs grow. As you need it, simply upgrade with larger capacity SATA drives. And if new SATA drives isn't enough, you can always add another Storage Central Turbo device for even greater storage.

The Smart Wizard installation CD makes set up a breeze. Set-up and drive configuration happens in no time, and the Storage Central Turbo appears like a new letter drive was added to your PC. New data disk volumes can be configured as public or private, and can be password protected in a snap.

System requirements include a DHCP server in a network, and Microsoft Windows XP Home or Pro (SP1 or SP2), or 2000 (SP4).

Note: The SC101T does not include a SATA drive. It has the capacity for up to two, sold separately.

What's in the Box
NETGEAR SC101T Storage Central Turbo, power adapter, Ethernet cable, installation guide, setup CD, SmartSync Pro Backup Software CD, and warranty/support information card.

Product Description

Netgear Storage Central Turbo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Slow and troublesome, May 25, 2007

By 

Glen Cunningham "saxman" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: NETGEAR SC101TNA Storage Central Turbo (Personal Computers)

I bought this because I needed some shared storage and had some extra SATA drives. It took only a minute to pop the drives in (no screws) and hook it up. The problems started when I installed the drivers and software.

Note that every PC on the network that wants to access the SC101T must have the drivers installed. Unfortunately, the drivers and software seem to be poorly written, with many problems occuring with no feedback and poor tools to help figure out what was going on. One drive letter kept disappearing, copying a large set of files completely locked up my system, and other real time programs like video players and Windows Media Player became slow and jerky, sometimes seeming to lock up.

When it works, the file transfer speeds are quite slow. I have a 100Mbps Netgear router, not a gigabit router, but given the problems with the software and drivers I would guess that they could be a bottleneck even with higher network rates. But beware, when it is working it can really tie up the available bandwidth of your Ethernet network.

I found that when I turned off my firewall and antihacker protection that the drive letters stayed around, the file copies worked without hanging. I started fiddling with the individual detail settings on the firewall, but kept finding more problems and finally gave up because it was too much work. Again, if the Netgear software tools were better they would give you some feedback about why it wasn't connecting or whatever and lead you to the correct settings on your firewall much much faster than just guessing and trying different combinations of settings.

Even with the firewall turned off, and the disk operating correctly, I found that other programs like video players (a couple seconds delay between video and audio - very bad viewing experience) were still affected even when there was no disk activity. This was unacceptable.

I also realized that all of the valuable data that I planned to store on this drive would now be on disks with a proprietary format! That means I can't pop them out and put them in a PC or other drive enclosure and access any of the data! It has to be this or a related device.

So I finally decided to remove the software and drivers (everything is now running normally again) and order some SATA to USB 2.0 external drive enclosures instead and put my drives in those. I'll have to move the USB drives around or use Windows file sharing to share files between machines, but that is worth the higher speeds, standard disk formats and no extra drivers or software to mess up my system.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wish I Hadn't Bought It, October 20, 2007

By 

Preston H. Lewis (Antelope, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: NETGEAR SC101TNA Storage Central Turbo (Personal Computers)

The Storage Central Gigabit unit is very nice looking and super easy to install drives (the front plate just slides off, slide the SATA drive in, put the front plate back on). However, as others have noted, it's not really a NAS device since every computer has to have the CD drivers installed in order to use it. It doesn't show up in your network folder and is totally invisible to your network computers, depending solely on it's on software. Besides that negative, it is not that fast. I have a gigabit adapter on my computer, a gigabit switch, and a gigabit router and it took 2 days (really, 2 days) to transfer around 300mb to it. I wanted it to put songs and movies on it and let everyone in my home with a computer use it when they wanted. It's just not up to it. My computer with it's gigabit NIC works great for that purpose, the SC101T doesn't. Again, it's just too slow and apparently does not achieve gigabit speeds from my point of view. I wish I had never purchased it.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT a NAS device., September 24, 2007

By 

Chenggong Liu - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: NETGEAR SC101TNA Storage Central Turbo (Personal Computers)

This divice have to rely on installing it's own software to "see" it over the network, and the software does not support Windows Vista. If you need a NAS system for you LAN, this will not work.