Ok, just to start, I was at Fry’s picking up a mothers day gift. While there, I was looking at some NAS devices, because I am always needing more storage, and I wouldnt mind mirroring some data. I am not too worried about the backup SW, because I run manual backups.
Anyway, I ran into this Netgear unit on sale for $99 with no HDD’s. Since I have a 500GB seagate barracuda SATA drive unopened at home, I decided to pick it up 😀
So, I get home and setup the device — all is good so far. Following the instructions (that I rarely do) I start installing the setup SW.
check for updates — OK
Error — SC101T cannot finish installation until the Promise ftsata2 drivers are removed. Please look in the release notes for instructions.
I spent 30 minutes online trying to find the release notes because the only documentation on the disk is for a SC101 for IDE based storage. Looking through each document failed to mention this error. Searching NetGear failed to find anything except an error for a BSOD or Hang. So far, not impressed.
So, here is NetGears solution for this which does address the driver
Cause — SCSI disk drivers from Promise company conflict with the SC101/SC101T device drivers. Promise drivers are typically used for RAID 1 or for SATA drives. Many newer computers use Promise SATA drivers.
Solution disable the Promise drivers. It does make note that if you dont use RAID or use IDE drives it can be safely disabled. It does not mention that if you are using SATA drives, not to do this? It also makes no mention of not being able to (in the future) use SATA disks in your computer. Luckily, I know better, however, I am now even less impressed.
Ok, then if many newer computers use this driver, and Netgear cannot get theirs to work with it, why not fix the problem before putting it out for use? Will this not just turn into a large amount of returns?
And Why do the drivers conflict since it goes over the network to access the data? Cant they figure out how to make it work? I can plug drives in through USB just fine, I can access network shares just fine.
So, I guess if you use SATA or RAID — Stay away from this product.
Oh, and in my browsing around, there are several HDD’s listed as incompatible — however the list was last updated in ’06 (even less impressed).
Be warned
