I installed this on Win Server 2003. It broke the DCOM drivers. I installed this on Win 2000. It corrupted the boot and I ha to repair the OS. NetGear should be ashamed.

Great article,just sorry I didnt find it before purchasing the SC101,ripped the guts out of mine and converted to esata housing for 1 drive + FAN! The worst computer related product I have bought in 20yrs will never buy Netgear again and tell everyone the same.

Agree completely with the author. I got so frustrated with the SC101 not working properly that I uninstalled it from two of my computers. During the uninstall both computers crashed. I'll resurrect them but the SC101 goes in the trash. I think the Netgear router will follow. I'm done with this junk. Good to know I'm not the only one with such a bad experience.

I like your article. When I was trying to un-install the SC101 software, the PC never worked again. That Netgear is a POS. I simply dont understand how it can mess up the PC so badly. I was lucky I had a clone of the hard drive, so I used it and threw away the Netgear device. Of course I need to leave the SC101 software installed or my PC will certainly die 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)




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.

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.

its the biggest peice of shite i've ever dealt with.

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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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'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.

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.

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 !?

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

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...

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....

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

...don't get Charlie round to do your installations.

Strange.

Been running one for over a year. Never had a problem. Setup Easy, Updates Easy, Performance always good.

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."

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

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

Troubleshooting when the SC101/SC101T Storage Central cannot create a mirror

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101628.asp

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.

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.

This is the funniest post I ever saw on Teh Inq! Period! I really want to know how it ends.

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

So you are saying that this product isn't recommended?

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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 :/

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.

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 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.

But tell us how you REALLY feel.

Where you went wrong was using a coin to turn to the screw instead of the proper recommended specification flat headed screw driver.

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.

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.


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...

Used to be a great product but some systems find it hard to see the drives and where are the 64bit vista drivers....

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 :)

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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?

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, 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

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