Storage Central - Model Sc101 £68 (£79.98 inc Vat) is a hard disk enclosure with built-in disc controllers and networking features. This gismo emulates one or more logical drives using one or two physical Ide or Pata hard disks and provides a shareable storage facility accessible by all windows computers on a Dhcp enabled network.
A storage Area Network (San) is a range of storage devices related to the local area network which are accessed and administered as one central pool, such storage does not want a specific computer to be running for file sharing.
Micro Usb Cable
The gismo is attached to the network switch or router and acts like a file server for all the windows computers. However, unlike most other network storage 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 comprise an 80gig hard drive - the storage 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 vast indefinitely. SmartSync Pro advanced backup software is included which creates real-time copies of stored data from the clients .
This product is well excellent for sharing and back up with the simplicity of using a local drive. Easy to set-up and install, connect to any wired or wireless router (54G Wireless Ethernet Adapter) or switch.
This is very basic storage area network type implementation but it is not a network attached storage device, so each computer on the network must have its own client software installed. There is no capability to connect to the device, using its native file share recipe and there is no platform-independent file-sharing support. (As opposed to the suitable situation where a Nas gismo will offer a shared file theory that can be mounted in the Os's native method.)
You Must use the included software. Although the gismo 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 transfer (read or write) about nearby 3Mb/s. (this should be more like 10Mb/s. This unit only supports straightforward security, ie a singular password for each "logical drive" configured while set-up, probably because this is designed for the home market.
Good stuff:
1) Supports spanning and mirroring capabilities.
2) varied gismo eliminating the need for an added computer/server.
3) Can preserve unlimited storage 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 install and set up assuming a straightforward 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) inexpensive compared to similar products. Pre-configured network-attached storage (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 market meet this requirement but older drives will likely not.
3) This theory uses a partition format unrecognized by Windows, So these hard disks can not be disconnected and put into someone else computer without being reformatted.
4) This gismo allows password protection of each individual logical drive but does not preserve Ntfs level security, there are no folders restricted to specific machines.
5) The disks are passively cooled and the gismo can get very hot when in use. Whilst this does not seem to adversely result operation, using two fast hard drives could lead to premature failures.
6) No file level compression or related security.
7) Each physical hard disk reacquires one Ip address.
Software Issues:
1) No web based administration utility, gismo 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 straightforward 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 install driver updates. This can be bypassed but you are informed that "the software upgrade contains vital enhancements" regardless of if you are using the latest 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 gismo 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 theory which explains the utility features, but does not comprise any instructions, user guide or how to information.
8) There are two configuration options, advanced and a set-up wizard, drives created with the advanced recipe 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 level 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 storage from any part of your network, or you have vital data protection requirements, or your network is not currently configured using or can not use dynamic host configuration protocol (Dchp), or is using non suitable inexpressive addressing range
This is not a prefect technical explication and is unsatiable for anything larger than a typical home or micro office environments. 6/10 for develop and implementation, 9/10 for exertion 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 practically positively have tweaked something somewhere which will make this unusable or unnecessarily complex 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 facts card;
Netgear storage Central Model Sc101 - enumeratemicro usb cable