Netgear Storage Central SC101 review

Sharing documents or MP3s across a home network is handy - but what if the PC on which the files are stored isn't switched on?

The answer is network storage - a hard disk drive that attaches to a router can be accessed from any PC on your network and which is always switched on.

Netgear's SC101 is a drive caddy that takes up to two 3.5in IDE hard disks. These aren't supplied, so you'll need to budget an extra £100 or so.

Full instructions are provided for setting your PCs up to talk to the device. Once installed, the software identifies the SC101 over the network. At least, that's the theory. In our case, it wasn't recognised at all. A glance at the user guide told us the flashing light at the front meant the Netgear wasn't compatible with our four-year-old Western Digital hard disk. It will only accept fairly recent drives conforming to the ATA6 (or UDMA133) standard.

With a newer disk installed, the SC101 revealed its strength. It enables you to carve up storage space into many individual partitions, each with its own drive letter. These are independently accessible by an unlimited number of PCs, and can be password-protected for security. Because the drives inside the box are hard-wired into a RAID array, they can appear as a single volume, or be used to 'mirror' data, providing you with an instant backup to safeguard your data.

Performance is good, although the fact that the Netgear SC101 operates through a hub brings its transfer rates down. It took 3m 51s to transfer our 500MB test files, a rate of 17Mbit/s.

Given the fact that you'll need to buy new hard disks for it, the Netgear isn't cheap. If you require its multi-partition and security options, it's a reasonable buy. But with high performance, a built-in router and a range of connection options, the Freecom FSG-3 is worth the extra cash.