Once you're through assigning volumes, you'll see those parts of the SC101's storage that are visible to each machine as a normal drive letter, not a mapped network drive, as with many Web administrated NAS boxes. The SC101 also has a feature normally found only in storage-area networks (SANs): the ability to create volumes that span multiple SC101s. If you add another SC101 Storage Central unit, you can access them separately or allocate space from both units as if they were a single volume. Alas, though Netgear told us that it's developing Mac and Linux drivers, for now, the SC101 is for Windows XP, 2000, and 2003 Server machines only. For backup for users who don't already have a favorite backup program, Netgear bundles the box with Storage Sync Pro.
Because the Netgear SC101 Storage Central ships without drives and its performance depends heavily on the drives you choose, we're not inclined to make a big deal out of the SC101's lackluster performance in our informal tests. However, with the single Western Digital Caviar WD800 hard drive that Netgear provided for testing, the SC101 was the slowest home NAS box we've seen to date at writing a 400MB folder of mixed file types as well as a 1.9GB single image file to its platters (in nonmirrored mode, using a shared partition). The SC101 was more competitive reading data back to our test bed, besting both Western Digital's NetCenter and Buffalo's TeraStation by small margins with the 400MB folder, though it was still the slowest we've tested with the 1.9GB image file. Still, the SC101's low price and features make it a compelling option in the field of network storage.
The Netgear SC101 Storage Central comes with a one-year warranty. Toll-free phone support is available 24/7, but only for the first 90 days after purchase. The company's Web site has a helpful user forum for presales and post-free-period support problems, as well as firmware upgrades and a PDF version of the user manual. You can also send e-mail to tech support from the Web site.
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