| Posted in the Netgear Forum by "fabians" Posted:
Tue Nov 8th, 2005 5:50 am Post subject: The reasons why
you should buy a SC101...
Hi all,
This product seems to have been through a very turbulent
up bringing just from reading this forum. I can
understand - as I'm about to share with you my experience
- why getting the SC101 to a functional and operational
solution was quite complex, time consuming and
inconsistent.
I purchased my SC101 here in Australia about 4 days ago
and I had absolutely no idea the amount of configuration
and troubleshooting required to get the SC101 to work. I
read the SC101 box in the shop and the words
"Sharable, Expandable, Fail-Safe Network
Storage" appealed to me.
Obviously the marketing people did their job well as I
purchased the SC101 wanting to experience this in my home
network. I currently own a a Cisco Systems LinkSysNSLU2
and it's been working great but NSLU2 has it's
limitations so I was willing to try out another solution.
Personally I have 14 years experience in
server/workstation design, development, installation and
maintenance and I was expecting a simple installation and
maintenance solution as I had come to experience with the
NSLU2. The SC101 solution was for the home user so I'd
expected NetGear at the least to have made a product that
was easy to install and use for almost anyone. With that
said I've implemented more complex hardware installations
in less time than it has taken to install the SC101...
but hey I'm always up for a challenge.
At first I wasn't really aware of what I was getting
myself into when I first unpacked, physically attached
and installed the SC101. Having followed the included
instructions I thought that once SC101 was plugged into
my NetComm Switch and the Utility software was installed
then all would be fine... was I wrong to think this? Well
I wouldn't be here writing this if I thought otherwise.
I first installed a 200GB Maxtor and 80GB WD drive and
found that the 80GB WD was not ATA6 compatible which
inturn failed to be recognised by the SC101 (4 blinks of
the green power light). Most home users would have no
idea what type of hard drive they use but luckly I had
another 200GB Maxtor ATA6 compatible drive which I
installed and now works fine too.
Anyway with the latest Firmware and Utility software
(4.14.0 & 1.5.5), my installation took about 5 hours
before I believed the SC101 was right to go. All seemed
fine and I was achieving 35 - 45 Mbps/Sec (around 4.5 -
5.1 mB/sec) transfer for file copies of around 1GB from
my PC to the SC101. These figures were according to DU
Meter readings was reasonable to expect.
4 hours and one new DHCP lease later.... I came across
the "No drives available to attach" message
when I found that my newly created SC101 partitions had
magically "disappeared" from My Computer on all
3 of my PCs. The NSLU2 gave me the option to configure
either a static or Dynamic IP address so why couldn't the
SC101?
Another 2 hours of head scratching and questioning my
technical ability I was led to the drive letter issue in
these forums. Reading post after post of SC101 owners
losing way too much hair in their youth trying to get the
SC101 to work got me a little concerned. Although I
decided to persist and not be detered as I was going to
make this solution work considering that I had a lot of
hair to lose.
I'd found that the ZeteraService.exe process was running
at almost 100% in Task Manager and trying to assign SC101
drives to drive letters that already existed! After
assigning the drive letters for the SC101 partitions to
ones not pre-occupied by my "other" hardware
the SC101 drives "re-appeared" again. All 3 of
my PCs were able to see the 2 Maxtor 200GB drives sitting
in my SC101 and all seemed well... again.
1 day later... I noticed that the SC101 had used in one
sitting (5 hours) 10 ip addresses from my DHCP server
(DLINK 502T with built-in DHCP). The SC101 had duplicate
dynamically assigned IP addresses assigned on my DHCP
server. Strangely the MAC addresses were duplicated too
which is forbidden in networking! 2 of my PCs couldn't
get network access from my Dynamic DHCP server because I
restricted the number of available IPs to 12. On my home
network I restrict IPs so only my authorised hardware can
only get access to the network. So where was it written
on the SC101 promotional box or in the documenation that
the SC101 could take up to 5 IP Addresses on my DHCP
server?
So I assigned Static DHCP IP addresses to the MACs of
each SC101 partition (4 IPs) and the SC101 itself (1 IPs)
for a total of 5 IP addresses for one piece of hardware.
Now the SC101 has got as much attention as I dedicated to
installing 3 PCs on my home network (which includes an
ADSL and switch installation and roll out of 10/100 Mbit
cable)! But again I was willing to persist and ensure
that the SC101 would work with my home network.
All my PCs can now access my SC101 without issue but the
real fun begins with the latest firmware.
Before I updated the firmware to 1.14.0 the SC101
hardware was hot to the touch (measured at 48 oC) and
working great as a foot heater. So I purchased an
external desktop fan to keep it running at a lower 28 oC
instead.
After I updated the firmware to 1.14.0 I feel like having
to kick the SC101 just to wake it up. Although the core
temperature is significantly lower I have to wait 5
seconds to access the drives while they spin up from
being set to sleep. Funnily enough I have no way of
changing this myself through the Utility software.
Everytime I have to access Windows Explorer, My Computer
and pretty much any other application that checks every
"installed" hard drive on the system for it's
availability; I have to wait 5 seconds. Why couldn't
NetGear have the SC101 partitions appear as removable
drives instead of built-in hard drives? Plus why do I
have no control over spin down/sleep times for my paid
hard drives?
Anyway since I couldn't resolve the problem myself (since
I have no control over spin down/sleep times) I now have
a scheduled vbscript that copies a file to the SC101
every 10 minutes so I can have full-time access to it.
All my PCs now do this and it keeps the SC101 awake until
all 3 of my PCs are no longer using the SC101 at which
time I want the SC101 to spin down the drives I paid for.
But once again I've decided to persist and I thought I
had figured out all my issues until I got one which I
really can't fix.
Day 4 (Today) and I started up one of my PCs hoping the
SC101 would now be recognised by Windows XP SP2 and
giving me ready access to my SC101 partitions.
Funny thing is that overnight after the PCs turned off
and the SC101 drives spun down to sleep yet the SC101
network card had been flooding my switch all night trying
to get a new IP address!
So I even though I turn on my PC in the morning and
hoping it would recognise my SC101 - my SC101 partitions
were missing... again!
So once again I realised that maybe there had been an
issue with SC101 when shutting down my PCs... maybe even
with my scheduled file copies? or even the DLINK DHCP
Static IP assignments?
I disabled my scheduled file copies to keep the SC101
awake and shut down my PC. I also restarted my DLINK ADSL
router and the SC101 picked up the Static DHCP IP
addresses I assigned. I even unplugged every other
network cable from the NetComm switch and so only the
SC101, one PC with the Utility software and the ADSL
router network cable was plugged in. I even restarted the
NetComm switch to make sure it was all ready without any
hinderance.
Then I let the SC101 drives spin down to sleep and after
the DHCP lease expired. 5 hours later and all of sudden
my switch is hit with a massive amount of traffic from
the SC101 Network card.
Thinking that someone was attempting to access the SC101
from my ADSL connection I unplugged my ADSL modem phone
line... yet still a massive amount of traffic. So is the
router having issues with the SC101? I load up my PC and
check the packet traffic on the switch and it all seems
to be coming from the SC101... strange. I changed the
Static DHCP assigned IP address back to a Dynamic DHCP
assigned IP address. The lease expired and yet the same
problem occurs again.
I can understand those here in this forum who have
wireless networks which have precious little bandwidth to
start with having networking issues with the SC101.
But... how do you think I resolved this issue?
1) I unplugged the power from the SC101...
2) I waited 10 seconds and...
3) I plugged it back into the power and...
4) Extended my DHCP lease time to 48 hours.
Problem fixed. Maybe in the next re-design of the SC101
NetGear could include an ON/OFF/RESET switch at the front
of the case? I seem to be doing this a lot since I
installed the SC101.
So far I've had no issues with data integrity... well not
yet. Maybe on a day when all else fails? I haven't dared
try mirroring because I just got the SC101 to work as it
is... well 90% of the time. And I have to switch the
SC101 (or at least reboot it) when it has been asleep for
extended periods of time... I'm yet to see what happens
if I leave it sitting still on the network with no PC
access for 48 hours?
So what am I left with? Is the SC101 still the
"Sharable, Expandable, Fail-Safe Network
Storage" solution I can rely on? Well I've got thing
to work and that's what counts. So for new SC101 owners
who want a piece of hardware with a personality? I'd
persist and get it working. Luckly for me I had no core
hardware issues with my NetComm switch or DLINK ADSL
router but of course that's all part of the fun.
Some of you out there might say that maybe I should have
done more research into the product before I purchased
it? Did I trust the NetGear brand too much? The SC101 is
targeted as a home IT solution where the end user is used
to "Plug-and-Pray"... ahem...
"Plug-and-Play" products.
Maybe NetGear marketing should attach the following
statement with all the others on the SC101 box so
potential new SC101 owners can know what their in for:
"Fun-filled for all who attempt to install, the
SC101 is a challenging yet frustrating solution that will
have your enemies begging for mercy and your system
administrator in tears. 5 stars."
and maybe even this...
"Join the fun and challenge as you and thousands of
existing SC101 owners figure out how to get the
look-a-like networked toaster to work with any network
environment."
Anyway good luck to you all and I'm sure you get your
SC101 working as well as mine is now.
I'm sure NetGear will get the point eventually either:
a) when they get back the million or so toasters they
sent out;
b) release the next hardware version which all existing
SC101 owners (including myself) contributed to (at our
own cost) to the development of (hopefully with less
issues!); or
c) doing more intensive, real life product testing before
they release a new product again... at least test the
damn thing with a sample of more than 1.
Cheers.
|
