UPDATE: also read my post about testing the Netgear ReadyNAS (it doesn’t suck)
In my continuing quest for more and better storage, I have taken the following path:
- Maxtor 5000DV, 120GB USB/Firewire, bought in 2003. Was dependable for 3 years (warranty period: 2 years) but has crashed a couple of times since (with data loss)
- LaCie Porsche, 160GB USB, bought in 2004. Worked OK for 2 years (warranty period: 2 years) but has crashed a couple of times since (with data loss)
- Iomega Desktop hard drive, 250GB 100Mb Ethernet, bought in 2005. Hasn’t broken down yet, but makes way too much noise (loud ventilator, running continuously).
- Netgear SC-101, 2×300GB Ethernet, bought in 2006. Supports RAID-1 mirroring, which I needed after all my hard disk crashes. For my less-than-optimal experience, read on.
Netgear/Zetera
I bought the Netgear/Zetera device after positive reviews on sites like infoworld.com. The Zetera software converts network-attached drives into virtual SCSI drives that can be mirrored (RAID-1) or spanned (not striped). In theory, one could put, say, 4 devices in a network with 2 x 500GB each and have a 4TB spanned T: drive.
So, I buy it with 2 x 300GB drives, pop them into the toaster, start it up, and create 2 virtual drives: 1 mirrored 200GB drive “MIRROR” for my music (backup of my CDs and a lot of podcasts) and the rest into a 180GB spanned volume “MOVIES”. First surprise: the Zetera software requires a (Windows only) driver on each computer that will access the data. I run 2 Windows machines, so that’s not really an issue, but if you’re on MacOSX, you would need 1 Windows station to manage the Netgear data and expose as a regular SMB volume: meaning double network traffic for each write/read operation. This is what my Netgear GUI shows: 10 new IP addresses.
I then start copying my music and movies over to the new drive. Copying 200GB of data at 45GB/h max (or some 30GB/h realisticly): it took a while, but at least my data is safe. Or so I thought. Every time you start the GUI, a popup appears with “Do you want to look for upgrades?”. At some point I’m thinking, “Hey, why not” So I upgrade the drivers on my desktop, and my laptop. Bad idea. To my amazement, I only have one drive anymore: “MOVIES”. The MIRROR drive has disappeared. I rerun the utility to attach all drives: “No drives available to attach”. This is where I get worried.
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Netgear SC101- drive lost
Video sent by pforret
On the former Netgear forum, this is a known error, which sometimes can be fixed by erasing something in the registry, re-attaching the drives, fixing the drive letter and a fair amount of praying. Why do I say “former Netgear forum”:
“As a result of the popularity”… Yeah, right.
To cite the Google cache before it disappears:
Just solved the problem of a lost drive after hybernate or reboot i.e. laptop (Win XP Home SP2) could not see a shared drive, but other PCs still could. And, I could not reattach (even after detaching) the lost drive using the SC utility.
These problems appear to be fully resolved by this sequence:
Step (1) - clean lost drive from the registry as follows (found by NetDr:)
“I believe the problem here stems from another entry in the registry that is showing the drive mounted already….
Registry Key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ZNS\Client
Click on each key below the Client Key and see if the drive that you are trying to mount already co-exist? If so, remove that key only and reboot then remount the drive of choice in the SCM Mananagement software. Example: If you are trying to mount a drive named SC101 and you know it’s not mounted already, yet you see a key in the registry path mentioned above then Windows thinks that you aleady mounted that drive and you must remove it to trick windows into believing that the drive is not mounted so that you can RE-MOUNT the drive again. ”Step (2) - Apply static drive letter as follows: (found by pslizard)
1) Rightclick My Computer
2) Click Manage
3) Click Disk Management
4) Rightclick on san drive and click Change Driveletter and Paths..
etc.
Cheers, SCuser
I also find a similarly disappointed customer at techknowman.com:
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.
Netgear tech support
So I decided to register the product on the Netgear support site and call for some technical support. When advised to use the command-line tool “ut” to check the storage device, I get:
===============================================================================
VERSION : 4.19.0 ROOT IP ADDR : 192.168.1.100
TOTAL(MB): 286184 # PARTITIONS : 2
FREE (MB): 78
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTITION LABEL IP ADDR SIZE(M)
15BC34B2-E41D-11DA-88C9-0001804AA8BF MIRROR 192.168.1.102 204800
8622F1B4-E41D-11DA-88C9-0001804AA8BF MOVIES 192.168.1.103 81306
===============================================================================
VERSION : 4.19.0 ROOT IP ADDR : 192.168.1.101
TOTAL(MB): 286184 # PARTITIONS : 2
FREE (MB): 78
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTITION LABEL IP ADDR SIZE(M)
15BC34B2-E41D-11DA-88C9-0001804AA8BF.m1 MIRROR 192.168.1.104 204800
8622F1B4-E41D-11DA-88C9-0001804AA8BF.s1 MOVIES 192.168.1.105 81306
===============================================================================
2 MicroSan found within subnet 192.168.1.255
So the partition “MIRROR” is still there, I just can’t get at it. Some consolation. Last thing I heard from Netgear (B.P. Moelker - NETGEAR Support Nederland) was June 29th. If this doesn’t get solved fast enough, I might become a very vocal unhappy customer!
UPDATE: my problem was solved as follows:
I got a reply from Tech Suppport with following suggestions:
1) try removing 1 of the 2 disks, and mount the remaining half of the mirror as a drive
=> that didn’t work, couldn’t mount that mirror half2) try to change the attributes for the mirrored partitions to “02 00 02″ for middle part and “0A” for the last but one byte.
(see kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101605.asp )
=> that worked! I changed
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 01 00 00 00 08 1D to: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0A 1D and
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 09 06 to: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0A 06.I could mount the mirrored partition, I copied all data from it, I removed the 2 x 100GB mirror partition and created a spanned 200GB partition. No need for the false security feeling of a mirror when you’re not sure it’s gonna be there tomorrow.
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Ik veronderstel dat je grootste bekommernis het recupereren van data is.
Ik zou alvast je mirror breken, een disk eruit halen. Als je dan iets verknoeid heb je nog een tweede kans via de mirror. Uiteindelijk is het daarvoor dat het ding dient.
Heb je al eens geprobeerd die disk rechtstreeks te mounten in je computer?
3: this drive uses a partition not recognised by windows without the software that comes with the unit. This means that you cannot just disconnect the drive out of the unit and put it into a standard windows 2000 or xp and read the contents.
(from amazon)
Just lost my drives today, got 3 back but 1 just doesn’t want to play. When I try to attach it I get ‘Drive already attached to some PC’ but it isn’t. The only difference was that this one had a password (which you can’t reset by the way). What fun
Ha! I had problems with the LaCie Porshe aswell! I broke it open, got me an ICY box and put it in there. Haven’t had any problems with it since.
Hi,
I too have had trouble with losing data on an SC101 and not being able to re-attach to a partition, even though the name can be seen.
did you ever find a way to get them back ? if so, please can you email me and tell me how ?
Once I get my data back, I am going to get rid of this Netgear SC101, it has been nothing but trouble !
My advise to anyone else out there who reads this… avoid the Netgear SC101 liek the plague ! there are much better NAS solutions out there if you pay a little more money. Sometimes , cheapest is not always the best in the long term, especially once you consider how much tima (and money) you can lose trying to fix problems when things go wrong.
Hi! Great website!! I too have just purchased an SC101. What a dog!! I have 2 hard drives and 7 partitions. I’ve lost 2 of them but the “ut_full” utility and I can see all 7 partitions. I have tried everything to get this working to no avail!!!
One of the lost partitions has some valuable info on it and I need to recover it.
Have you any advice??
Thank you
Steve Blair
I got a reply from Tech Suppport with following suggestions:
1) try removing 1 of the 2 disks, and mount the remaining half of the mirror as a drive
=> that didn’t work, couldn’t mount that mirror half
2) try to change the attributes for the mirrored partitions to “02 00 02″ for middle part and “0A” for the last but one byte.
(see kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101605.asp )
=> that worked! I changed
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 01 00 00 00 08 1Dto:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0A 1Dand00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 09 06to:00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0A 06.I could mount the mirrored partition, I copied all data from it, I removed the 2 x 100GB mirror partition and created a spanned 200GB partition. No need for the false security feeling of a mirror when you’re not sure it’s gonna be there tomorrow.
Might have found the answer!! Are any of you using Daemon tools?
Daemon tools uses a virtual SCSI adaptor (similar to the SC101 app). Try unistalling Daemon and then uninstalling and reinstalling the SC101 software - worked for me!!
To all of you who have purchased this product and have the ability to return it… I seriously suggest you return it! I have had my unit for over 6 months, and this unit is a piece of sh!t! I have 1 300GB drive in the unit with 2 partitions on it, 1 spanned partition because I added space to it, which really means there are 3 partitions on it. The spanned partition I can no longer access any of the data on that “drive”. The software says it attached fine, but in My Computer, I cannot access the drive at all! I suggest we all get together and file a class-action lawsuit against Netgear for this product, since it absolutely does not work!
Just experienced a similar problem where my single mirrored partition disappeared. I just followed the guide above to removing the client drive from the registry which worked fortunately.
Does anyone know of a way to keep the SC101 from going to sleep? I use to run KeepAwake (a utility a member of the former Netgear forum wrote) but Netgear apparently disabled the KeepAwake functionally in one of their firmware “updates”. ARG! So now the @#$%#@ toaster goes to sleep …. which plays havoc with some of my apps. Also if somebody knows of a way to bypass the SCM format and re-format the SC101 drives to a NTFS format …. please let me know. Thanks!
I just purchased the SC101 about a month ago. Working perfectly fine until one day, poof, gone from my network. After trials and tribulations of about a week of thinking I lost all my precious data, i managed to get it to reconnect about 30 minutes ago and it’s fine. Here’s some suggestions when you think it’s all lost:
1) DON’T Mirror, DON’T SPan.
1.1) if you have two 400 gig drives in there like I do, make them both 400 gig spaces.
I needed mirroring, so I have Drive L as a 400 Gig Drive, and drive M as a 400 gig drive. I named L Main and M named Backup of Main.
2) Do NOT Share. Only have One computer Which you wish to have primary access to your SC101 set up access to it.
2.1) I have my wife’s computer (which is better than mine /cry) access both drives on the SC101. She then shares out L as a share that all of our computers can access. Peridiocally (i can’t spell) she or I will go to the computer, copy the data from L to M. THus L amd M are kept identical about every Week.
Now, i know this isn’t the superb Mirroring and easy safe data backup that we’d like, but it is reliable at this point. But more importantly it’s a Ghetto Redneck Poor Man’s Network Sans.
Tips and Tricks:
To Recover/Attack to a Drive that you truly believe is lost, Don’t Fret… Pull out some hair, punch your cat, and get drunk. Come back 2 days later, and get ready to work.
First, obtain a copy of ut_full from netgear (http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101605.asp) is where i got mine.
Now, their instructions SUCK!!!! Here are the Real Instructions:
A) open command prompt (i.e. start > run > type: cmd > press enter)
B) navigate to where you saved ut_full (i recommend your c:\… if so, type cd\)
C) type ut_full listall
you will get something ilke the following back:
=============================
Version : 4.19.0 BooT IP Addr: 192.168.0.112
Total(mb): 388476 # of Partitions: 1
FREE (MB): 0
=============================
Partion LABEL Address Size
e2793566-85f3-11da-9166-00c09f5123448 LEO 192.168.0.115 388476
D) NOW, this is important. There are IP Addresses all over the Place. Find the One that is right for you. here is how:
D1) ut_full getpart address1 address2 password
D1.1) for example: ut_full 192.168.0.112 192.168.0.115 myKewlPassword
d1.2) keep trying this until you get the following:
=============================
Username: LEO (this is your partition Label from above)
Unique Name: e2793566-85f3-11da-9166-00c09f5123448 (This is the Partion numbers from above)
Read Token: myKewlPassword
Write Token: myKewlPassword
Attribute: A BUNCH OF NUMBERS SUCH AS: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 0a 06
E) Now, let’s make this baby work.
E1) execute the following: ut_ful newattr ipaddress_from_above_that_worked ipaddress_two_from_Above_that_Worked your_password_that_worked
E2) next, you will get Imput new attribute and a bunch of numbers such as 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF
E2.1) under which, type the following combination of numbers: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 Number_From_Above Number_FromAbove
Now Example:
My Attribute Returned: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 0a 06
input new attribute: 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF
I would type in : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 0a 06
HOWEVER, if for example, the following were returned instead:
=============================
Username: LEO (this is your partition Label from above)
Unique Name: e2793566-85f3-11da-9166-00c09f5123448 (This is the Partion numbers from above)
Read Token: myKewlPassword
Write Token: myKewlPassword
Attribute: A BUNCH OF NUMBERS SUCH AS: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0F 3B
My Attribute Returned: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0F 3B
input new attribute: 00 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 AA BB CC DD EE FF
I would type in : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 0F 3B
F) now, the happy part: you should see the following:
=============================
Username: LEO (this is your partition Label from above)
Unique Name: e2793566-85f3-11da-9166-00c09f5123448 (This is the Partion numbers from above)
Read Token: myKewlPassword
Write Token: myKewlPassword
Attribute: A BUNCH OF NUMBERS SUCH AS: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 02 00 00 00 0F 3B
=============================
target busy, retrying …
target busy, retrying …
target busy, retrying …
writePartInfo : timeout, Partition not Found
Right when it says writePartitionInfo : timeout, partition not found, the SC101 HD light will light up, it will make a funky sound like it’s deleting your hard drive or something and scare you.
NOW, you should be at a command prompt again. This is where you run your STorage Central Manager. Use the wizard to attach to the drive again.
Boom, all your data should be there!!! WOOOT.
Now, if you were originally intending to do mirroring? Create a 2nd drive with the unalocated space of the 2nd drive. OR, repeat the steps to renable your mirror / 2nd drive and attach to it again. and from then on, simply manually copy/backup the data.
the important numbers in the string of numbers:
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 0F 3B
are the LAST TWO and setting the 88 and AA to 01 and 01
What a crock of horsemanure… I just attached a 2nd small drive to the little pig and all it does is showing me that both 80Gig-drives have got 1.5Gig free space. All files gone… Cool, thanks Netgear…
I echo the comment…”return it while you have the chance”..better yet don’t buy it in the first place (except mine which will probably go on e bay)
Haven’t had the mirroring problems, etc others have described. My problem is in copying files to the sc101. Seem to take avi’s ok, but when it comes to jpeg files..watch out. Ive done some experimenting. can copy 1-9 files without incident. as soon as i try to copy 10 or more the system seems to “freeze”. Disk lite stayes almost steady on for about 5 minutes, then completes copy. If i try to copy say, a couple of hundred jpgs, it is not unusual to get the blue screen of death. Have tried changing nic speeds, firewall on, firewall off, norton on, norton off.
Been in contact with the netgear no-help desk.
Fortunatly bought it in a bundle with 2 500g drives, so if I drive a stake through it i will still about break even. That doesn’t count enough time invested to obtain a degree in computer science though.
thanks for the rant.
JUST DON’T BUY ONE!!!!!!!!!!!
also a shame that will only work on the one subnet, the box indicates it supports TCP/IP, but that does not mean you can route to it from another subnet and you have to use the software provided - not impressed at all and not disk issues yet.
Q1: Hey, my SC101 (3 partitions all mirrored (250 GB of data mirrored over 2 x 250 gb drives) freezes the “My Computer” windows in XP for some reason, I can access the drive by “my documents” then a drop down to the drive on the listing.. any thoughts as to how to get “my computer” not to freeze?
The SC101 truly “doth su*k the devils c*ck” but I am stuck with it after all this investment
Q2: Any idea the time delay before the drives “sleep”?
Having utilised yout keepawake script it seems as if “my computer” is still replaced by the flashing red light on the TOASTER for that is official nickname for the beast!!!!!
A cure for this would be wonderful, however since I am a geologist / road safety professional and not an I.T. Guru you will have to be gentle with me
#8
“Might have found the answer!! Are any of you using Daemon tools?”
I too think that this program and other like alcohol 120% would causes all of these issues
I removed the Netgear Utility & reinstalled it after removing alcohol 120%, drives were refound, problem solved
Help!!!
I’ve got a sc101 with two drives in ntfs mode (remember converting the unit from san to nas?).
Well the winxp PC the sc101 was attached to has died and now I need to reinstall winxp, but if I do so the two drives inside the sc101 won’t be seen anymore (they’re effectively local ntfs logical partitions).
So I think I’m screwed here…….
Luca
I did not lose data but a hell of a lot of time with this crappy product. I will never ever buy any products from netgear. Their software is too buggy.
Just got DHCP working and programmed into the Cisco PIX unit, The SC101 captured .133 and I’ve installed the software.
Problem comes up on Windows 2000 -> ZNS driver needs software to load….
Anywaon come up with this ? Anyway call me if you have any idea about this so called “Driver” which isn’t on the CD that came with the software…. 866-295-0581 - Walter
Wonderful….wish I had read your blog before buying one >:/
I bought one of these back in January of this year and I can say I’m NOT pleased with it. The tech support sucks, the documentation sucks, and the performance SUCKS.
I have 20 IP’s available on my internal network and it continues to steal addresses when they become available. Eventually it will take them all and the router will crash. Releasing the addresses from the router does nothing because it will steal them again as soon as it powers back up. The only way to resolve it is to leave it unplugged for a day or so.
I have two drives in it, one 350 gb, and a 400 gb. No mirror, no raid, nothing but a single volume for each physical drive. They drives constantly drop off. One was renamed through the utility and continues to swap names back and forth whenever it feels like it.
I’ve been fiarly happy with other NetGear products, but this one sucks. Don’t buy it. I’m slowly moving data off onto another machine. Halloween is coming…. I think I’m going to sacrifice it in a bonfire.
Hi
same - bad - experience here: Bought SC-101 just 2 weeks ago. Equipped it with 1x 250 GB.
I created 2 drives -
1x exchange : share data between lan computers
1x backup : used “smartsync pro” (which seems to be a great product btw) which came with the netgear.
a) I was unable to backup “my documents” (100.000 files, 13.000 folders).
I then deleted about 64.000 files from “my documents” and copied the rest to the “backup”-drive. (took hours!). Then I decided differently and started to delete the complete “my documents” from the backup with “del *.* /s /f /q” (
I have all the similar problems as you guys, or should I say had. I got a SC101 with 1xST400Gb and 1×200GB Maxtor, filled with media, I have 4 PCs on my LAN, all connected to the SC101. I have tested all you say and called tech support several times demanding them to take back this shitty product but they keep saying “No”.
Last night I got so sick of the “No driver to attach” message which comes once and a while and it takes from 10 minutes to an hour to fix/computer… So.. last night I got the SC101 discs up and running on one PC and copied to data to a bunch of old, smaller, HDDs. I pulled out my old P3-700 computer, put in the 2 discs from the SC101, created new paritions and copied back all data… That old P3-700 will now act “server” at my place.
I will go to a friend of mine this weekend to get even with the SC101,.. He’s got a shotgun and I am gonna have some fun
I wish I found this web page 6 months ago! That’s when I bought the toaster, thinking it might be a good solution (as one of my customers also has one). I put two 300GB drives on it (and being an idiot that I am!), copied all my data (150GB worth of historical data) onto the 300GB mirrored drive. It all worked fine (almost) until yesterday.
Now, the story: The drive dropped off the network, so I restarted the Zetera service on my computer (which usually fixes the problem). This time it didn’t, and when I checked the SCM this morning, there are NO drives to attach, NO drives to set up, NO free space, and of course NO MORE 150GB of my DATA!
I have physically detached one of the drives and tried to “manage a broken mirror” but no good.
I read this page, but the solutions only address the problem when drive attachments fail, not when the entire drive has disappeared. And I know I can’t hook the hard drives onto a computer to recover the data (because the file system is different).
If ANYONE has any idea on how to retrieve my data, I will owe you BIG time!!!! This also has my wife’s stuff on it, so you can imagine the pain I’m going through at the moment!
Thanks in advance.
Si Thu
(I also have a Netgear WGT624 wireless router, perhaps I should reconsider!)
I have a SC101 (i do not like it), and i deleted som files from it, now i like to recover them, do’s any one know how to?
I did not know from the begining, that SC101 did not use a standart harddisk format like fat32/ntft, ext3. And not a standars tcp/ip connetion to it!!!
If u are reading this and do not have a SC101, do not buy it.
I purchased two of the sc101 units and 4 320G drives to fill them with a few days ago. Let me re-iterate - Don’t buy these pieces of crap!@ My life has been hell trying to set up a DHCP server, copy files to a mirror, and having my windows XP lock up every time I try to move more than a few MB at a time.
Even as I type this message, I am certain that if I open the “my computer” icon, my OS will hang. What good is a NAS device if you can’t populate it with files, data, programs, or general information? I haven’t rebooted so frequently since windows 3.1!
I thought the problem would be solved when I realized I had pinched the drive cables when putting the front cover back on the units. Nope! The damn things just seem to fall asleep in the middle of doing work. They are not even hot!
Warm, yes, but not even compared to clothes fresh from the dryer.
Before I get too far down the path with these, I personally will take the advice I have read. I am defragging the internal drives my data was removed from, copying everything back, and sticking the physical disks in a linux box to become my file server. True TCP/IP, NFS, SMB, even ftp or http based service if needed for LAN/WAN sharing. It has been less than 10 days. I wonder if buy.com or netgear will be refunding me. I hope I can also use credit card buyer protection. Wish me luck.
If you are considering one of these Netgear SC101 units…
STOP! Look away. Turn around, and RUN as fast as you can.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Oh God Thank you!
I’m going to run as fast as I can and return this unit since I am within a few days of purchasing it. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!Thank you!
All my stock photos, event photos, captured video my entire business could have been down the drain. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I have been killing myself for almost entire nights trying to get this going and dead tired during the day with my clients. I needed it to put in my data fire safe because it fits. I will get back out and try to find an external drive that is no longer than 8 1/4 inches and no taller than 6 inches. I was wondering what happened to the Netgear forum that was mentioned in different posts and was actually trying to read one in French when I finally found this one. Many blessing to you for gathering this info and may your profits be big. Thank you!
wish i had read that blog earlier. owner of two sc-101 toasters, which never worked correctly. i thought a device with mirroring ability would bring more safety in my data - far wrong!
sc-101 is just a half-baked device, never will buy products from netgear again.
a contribution for google hitlist:
netgear sc-101 is crap
do not buy netgear sc-101
Aaarggghhh!
Tonight had to reboot my router and PC, the SC101 didn’t re-attach.
BTW, I have the SC101 with 2x Maxtor 300Gb, single partition, mirrored across both HDDs.
Ok I thought, seen this before, I’ll start up SCM and just re-attach… hang-on, a new version… 1.5.7, Ok, let’s get it installed, I’m sure it’s got some improvements over the current version…
successfully installed…great…
re-attach my mirrored partition… what the hell!?!?!
Where’s all my files… looks like I’ve only got some of the files, where have the rest gone? Help! Particularly as it’s sentimental photo’s the better half has put on there!
anybody got any ideas? Looking through the suggestions above it’s all about entire partitions going walkabout, not parts of a mirror
Recommendation…
While you have the disks visible on your windows box from the SC101 - copy the data somewhere safe like your PC. Be quick they will disappear.
Uninstall all the SC101 software from your PC.
Take the disks out of the SC101 and put them in your PC. Format them as NTFS and share them from your windows box. Firstly compared to the SC101, sharing disks from windows and using NTFS gives you more benefits than the SC101 ever would.
Actually i put the two disks into a Linux box and shared them using SAMBA - works a treat
Now the empty chasis for the SC101 (toaster) makes a great door wedge to keep your door open when you are moving things in and out of the house, or garage - because its more useful as this feature than a network storage device.
Thats the only recommendation for the SC101 - stay clear of it, or don’t even buy it.
I had the dissapeared drive which was seen in ‘UT’ however i found that if you say don’t share a drive then the pc you installed the drive on dies (Or re-install Windows) you will not be able to see the drive. If you hold down the reset on the unit for 6 seconds it will reset the password and the no sharing bit so you can access you files.
It is a bit of a pest though… i am pleased i had 2 old drives to use and did not pay for those aswell.
I purchased my new SC101 from Office Depot in May 2006. I loved it. Easy to setup and use, seemed reliable, met my requirements for accessibility from the LAN. I did not mind the proprietary disk format, SAN block file transfer or Windows client requirement. I felt that DHCP was the most effective address assignment method. I have a degree in computer network engineering and a B.S. in computer information systems, combined with about 20 years of computer and network support experience so I feel competent and confident in my assessment.
Then the trouble came. A few days ago my 6 month old seagate 500 GB hard drive failed and I’m convinced that the excessive heat contributed to this failure. So I purchased two new 400 GB Seagate drives on sale and figured I’d mirror them. Get this, two brand new drives that work fine by themselves, and after two days of attempts to install them in a mirrored configuration, no such luck. The drive letter is created, the drive is shared, and then the mirror failed with absolutely no useful diagnostics. Repeated attempts all end with the same result. If the mirror were to succeed, I’d be worried that it’s still not reliable.
Worse yet, I read that removing a mirrored drive will result in a permanently broken mirror. If you want to re-create the mirror, you will have to transfer your data to some other network location and then create the mirror from scratch.
Given that the tech support is non-existent and the documents are useless for troubleshooting any real problems, I’m scratching my head to come up with some use for this NAS device. I’m just glad that I never recommended it to any of my friends or associates. If I had I’d be calling them now to retract my endorsement.
/joe b
well, seems that I’m not the only one that has problems with this frikkin toaster….
In teh beginning it never worked, so i contacted N support, and after 1 month they told me that maybe was teh firmware the problem, so the only solution taht i ahd was to wait.
Im may they released the new software, that resolved the problem of the “sleepy toaster that makes teh programs to hang”; everything was going good, teh usual drives that appear and disapepar was basically resolved doing an isntall and reinstall of teh utility, so not so bad…until today.
I ahve a SG300 and a SG120, the 300 has 2 partitions and the 120 is one partition; they worked fine uintil today, when i wake up i found the BSOD and i restqarted the pc as usual, redy to consider the idea of formatting the hd and isntall again xp, when i found something that is worst than a nightmare: 1 of teh 3 partition is GONE! when i try to attach the drive the toaster start to blink 2 times on the green light, and everything stop to work until i don’t disconnect the toaster.
Seems that the 2 blinks mean that the drive is bad (6 months old), so i pulled it out, and attached to my pc to check the SMART paramters and run a ful diagnostic, but everythign is ok! so why the frikkin box doesn’t let me see the drive and blink twice?
At this point the enxt step is to contact Zetera, that is the one that produce the ZNS filesystem used by the toaster, and ask tehm if there is any chance to mount this disk on a windows machine and recover my 90 gb of 3d models, paid more than 200K….hope for them that it will eb possible because somebody must pay for this….
throw away this shit and buy a serious NAS, like the Buffalo! to save is never a gain!
The SC101 is total and utter junk - I’m just gutted that its taken me 6 months to realise it. I’ve lost countless hours scratching my head and trying to re-attach lost drives, finding lost folders, resolving crashes while copying large folders. It was only when I bought a couple og QNAPs to run slimserver/squeezebox and realised just how easy/stable/reliable/trouble free they were that the penny dropped - dump the thing - its an evil piece of hardware.
I bought an SC101 and wondered why it came on and off my network. Now I can’t access my data anymore, the drive just dissapears and you can not reattach it. Has the same experience as other users: support does not exist or is completely useless (they insist its some firewall issue), the documentation and troubleshooting says nothing and the damned thing got two PC to freeze in a row.
Don’t know what I am going to do to recover the data.
Does anybody start filing a claim against netgear - looks like they are aware of this issue and keep quiet.
I bought mine about 8 months ago along with a matched pair of Hitachi 250 gig drives. I set it up with both drives formatted with one large partition on each without the raid configuration.
I had some trouble right off the bat with it losing it’s connection, the first thing I did was to dump a few gigs of data to one of the drives in one operation and it lost communication with itself, after rebooting both the PC and the NAS(ty thing) everything was fine. Since then I have had the same issues as many who have posted here losing the link to the thing, but so far I am able to get everything back in order with a reboot of the PC and sometimes I have to power everything down including the network, reboot, and I’m back to work. I also have trouble sometimes with the Zetera service crashing and have to go through the same routine to fix it.
The one big gripe I have about it, and as far as I can see from reviews of other NAS units out there is that they are so slow, this one in particular. I wanted something simple that uses less energy that a peered PC to dump my downloads to not realizing that this approach was so stinking slow.
Maybe the difference for me having better success is that I’m not RAIDing it? It still doesn’t give that warm fuzzy feeling after seeing so many others are having trouble with it. I’m also concerned about the heat dissipation which is probably part of the problem with some of the failures people are having.
I’d probably look at something like the Synology DS-106e at this point, stay away from this toaster.
great….sold one of these to a client
now all the data is gone and only have a partial backup
what a piece of garbage…..how can they sell this as a nas device….its useless
how can you rely on a windows driver to do the raid mirroring
completely ridiculous
This is the follow-on from my post on 7th October (Post 29). After a month of hoo-haa with Netgear, I received a new unit. (It smells like new plastic and the serial number is different so I guess it’s a new unit!)
Still none of that 180GB I lost is nowhere to be found!!! I only attached one of the mirrored hard drives, but it tells me the hard drive has NO free space to allocate (when I tried creating a new drive). But the best part is, I can’t even delete the “existing drive”, there is no option to do that!
So it sees the drive (300GB), it tells me there’s something there (tell me 0GB free space), but how the stinking hell am I supposed to access that data??? At least give me an option to delete the existing drive, as I have GIVEN UP on this and resigned to the fact that 180GB is GONE!
I’m not boasting but I have BSc Hons in Computer Science, CNA, MCP, MCSA, CCNA, CCNP, so I think I do know a bit about computers. I have tried everything I can think of! Gone, I tell you, gone are the data!!!!
Have 2 of these with 4 HDD’s
From experience - Never Mirror - once the mirror is dropped all is lost (Yes it will drop the mirror it’s just a question of when).
Do not expect any help from Netgear - They know less tahn you do!
Other than that keep your fingers crossed and you will be ok - maybe!
I can’t offer too much extra joy for anyone on this blog, but I can throw in a couple of extra snippets of information. My LAN has two (different brand) laptops running XP, and a Win2K server on it. Both laptops hate the SC101 drivers, freezing when they go in and out of hibernation. The Win2K server detects new hardware every time it boots, but three clicks of the “esc” key shuts it up. Just found out last night that different machines on the LAN see different files in the same directory! No security restrictions meant to be in place; all the files are really on the SC101 - but the Win2K machine can’t necessarily see files the the XP machines put into a directory.
I’ve been chasing Netgear for about three months now, asking when the next firmware/driver update is due. Their helpdesk promises me it will be out “within a month”, but it’s been delayed by a month already.
Pricing deals on Maxtor Shared Storage at the moment….
I my GOD. I just bought one yesterday.
Please, is there a happy SC101 user out there?
I had no problems installing it. I plugged it on a NetGear Wireless router. I just inserted a 250 Gb Disk drive. Created two disks, 150 & 83 Gb.
I do not use mirroring.
The Backup drive is to make you feel that your data are safe. Are my data safe or in 6 months I will find out that there are no attached disks and no data etc?
Both computers had no problems after several reboots and recovering from Hibernation. Drives reappeared after a few seconds.
The software is really poor and no Undelete file option.
When I bought it I never thought that it would have a different file system (not NTFS).
Firmware upload failed. Any help?
When you set up the mirrored partition, how long did it take? Mine’s been going for at least an hour and a half. It took minutes to set up the first drive, but the mirroring is taking forever. The drives are only 120gb each. Just wondering because it seems like something isn’t quite right. I wish I’d found your entry before I bought this thing. I’m trying to make the most of it, regardless. I refuse to allow it to be an $80 doorstop.
Hey
Thanks, a lot for your fine report and feedback. I was 5sec. from pressing enter to purchase this Netgear SC101, but thanks to you I will reconsider my needs and if I still will go for the NDisk solution I will not buy Netgear.
Hey all,
Yet another disssatisfied voice in the malestrom of hate over this damn data toaster.
Worst of all, I sold the head of Design at my company on it… “Half a terabyte of storage! Mirrored data so it’s safe! If a drive fails you won’t even notice!”
Boy was I wrong.
The thing was slow from the get-go, but hey, it’s half a terabyte, right? You bring things local, work on them there, then save it back to the unit. Things worked fine for literally ninety days, like it’s got a timer in it, and then WHAM.
I get this little “broken mirror” message on my screen, and everything is GONE. I look at the toaster, and the red light is on constant, and the little green light is blinking. After much testing, I come to the conclusion that one drive has gone down. “No problem”, I think, “I’ve got it mirrored!” I throw just the good drive in, and I can see the partition! Horray, I’m saved!
Nope.
The drive won’t mount. I can see it… I can TASTE the data. My PC has it’s little face pressed up against the network, peering in at 3 months worth of Deisgn department work, but can access NONE of it.
No phone support from NetGear, no response to my frantic emails, my posts on their forum never make it by the moderators who police the boards to make sure people don’t post negative things and ruin their cashflow… I’m disgusted.
DON’T BUY THIS THING! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, RUN! RUNNNNNN!!!!!!!
I haven’t lost data because I keep regular backups. I have formatted the drives with NTFS but when I restart the server if is connected to ( Server 2003 ) it looses all it’s share permissions . Any Ideas ?
My mirror just broke because my firewall was blocking access to the IP of one of the drives. If you’re mirroring, make sure your firewall isn’t blocking ANY of the SC101 traffic (there’s a lot of it!)
Once again I have to comment as I did before that I have not lost anything yet, but I’m not mirroring, just using it as two data drives on the network, Zetera crashes and burns with regularity but no data loss.
DO NOT MIRROR THIS THING! It’s useless that way……….
i have recently bought this unit and i have nothing but problems… i cant even set a drive keeps saying “failed to create drive letter”"”…
nothing more to add all this comments.
When I bought it I never thought that it would have a different file system (not NTFS) and of course nothing appear on the retail box!
Problems since the second day, same problems of other comments.
Just the last: SC101 is a piece of shit!
Complete and utter crap for a product. They ought to be embarrassed to still sell this. Staples, where i picked mine up, will be hearing from me on this crap product as well.
Okay, the SC101 is crap! Period. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PIECE OF CRAP!
But since I can’t return it for a refund, I decided to experiment with the SOB. I managed to make it a stable (6 months so far) NAS device. Here is what worked for me …..
Put the SC101 on a UPS.
Install two matched HDs ….. two Seagate 250GB IDE 7200RPM HDs, etc.
Format each drive with the ZNS file system, to maximum size.
DO NOT partition the drives … format each drive to the maximum size.
DO NOT MIRROR THE DRIVES!
Install the SmartSync PRO software (the only blessing of the SC101) on a PC that will run 24/7/365 and is on a UPS.
Create a 1kb text file on the PC.
Set up a profile with SmartSync Pro to MOVE the text file to the first NAS drive every 30 minutes starting at 12:00:00 today.
Set up another profile to MOVE the text file from the first NAS drive to the second NAS drive every 30 minutes starting at 12:10:00 today.
Set up another profile to MOVE the text file from the second NAS drive back to the PC every 30 minutes starting at 12:20:00 today.
Moving the text file every ten minutes keeps the SOB SC101 from going to sleep. It seems like whenever the SOB goes to sleep or wakes back up, the configuration is in danger of being corrupted.
Try what I wrote and post your results ……
AND DO NOT LET ANYONE ELSE BUY THIS CRAP! ARG!
Frank,
I have to agree with your initial observations, I have two identical drives partitioned to 100% each, no mirror and am using an UPS. I’m not using the SmartSync software though I’m just using it as a mass storage device not as a backup. I let the unit go into power save mode, so far no lost data in about 9 months or so. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and moving data off of the second drive in preparation to put it in a USB box, I just don’t trust the thing. Anything that uses a software layer to manage hardware of this nature is doomed to failure in my opinion, if the ZNS service crashes, which it does on my box frequently, you’re left with no connection to the thing and have to reboot, if you can, it usually takes a power button to get it to shut down.
Good luck to everyone!
Complete agree.
Has anyone managed to recover their disks from the SC101.
I’m not talking about the data on it, but I was wanting to reuse the hard drive in a windows machine, installed it but windows doesnt recognise it. It sees the hardware, but I need something to reformat it
Anyone know if Netgear plans to fix these problems in their software? They haven’t had a sw upgrade in nearly a year.
I have had trouble with broken mirrors three times and repaired them with UT_full attr.
Now my I-tunes folder has turned into an unreadable file name! It should have 10,000 tracks in it
How can I get it back?
Martin
Hi
I have run SFSextract
Single did not find the itunes folder or contents
Thorough found some contents but reported
sfs_dinode_read[1476]:corrupt dinode error -3 at , line 868
Any ideas what this means?
This hardware is piece of s*!t ! DO NOT BUY IT AND NEVER EVER PUCHASE ANYTHING FROM NETGEAR AGAIN AS THEIR SUPPORT IS ALSO S*!T.
If you want a router get Draytek - my 2600 is 3 and a 1/2 years old is on 24/7 and always works.
I have had all the problems experienced here (and I am also on my 2nd unit).
I have lost data, lost partitions, lost disks due to hardware failure (I’m sure this is due to excessive heat as the unit has no cooling fans, only a passive heat sink), the mirroring function gives data discrepancies on each pc on the network (diffewrent PCs see different folders, file dates are different and opening up the same filename on different PCs gives differnt versions of the files i.e. the mirror has broken and different PCs are reading each disk independently.
Netgear support never reply to emails nor phone calls relating to this problem. I always get escalated to 2nd level support and technician “will ring you back” - what a joke they never call back.
Out of desperation I even emailed Zetera to ask as to how I could recover data from a partition on the disk. Didn’t even acknowledge my email let alone reply to it. So I have a disk I know has my data, but I cannot get access to it ! Zetera is you read this I suggest that you fix the software issues with your drivers or place in the public domain a utility so that we can extract the data from our disks (I know about SFSextract but this only works if you can get a drive letter access under windows to the sc101 otherwise your are stuffed), and consign this piece of s*!t to the graveyard.
The last error from ut listall (Unable to resolve partition) has finally cracked my patience and its going in the bin (after I’ve put it through the mangle).
I have 24 years professional IT experience both as a systems admin and developer and in all this time I have never come across such a piece of garbage ! Netgear should be taken to court for misrepresenting this unit as a network data storage unit - a data shredder is nearer the mark !
For Google : DO NOT BUY THE SC101 - IT’S CRAP !
I reinstalled my laptop with XP Pro and could only pick up 2 of 3 partitions (murpheys law, the only one that really mattered was the one missing).
Thanks Kevin (post 20th Aug 2006) followed your suggestions and didn’t work straight away but retried a few times. I also tried uninstalling and reinstalling Storage Central Manager (SCM), but also didn’t work straight away. Tried power-cycling a few times, in correct order…SC101, modem, router and then laptop. And only after I hit the little reset button with a paperclip for over 6 seconds and then power cycled the router a few minutes later, it worked! I could pick up the partition in SCM.
I wasn’t aware of the reset button, if pushed quickly it reboots and if pushed for over 6 seconds it unattaches and resets the SC101. So hope this helps someone else. Not sure exactly what fixed it, but definitely some combination of the above.
Ironically I was on hold for Netgear support when I finally got it working (after being cut off the 1st time and over 40 minutes later). The guy was brazen enough to ask me to give him an excellent rating after I fixed it. So, instead, the excellent rating goes to this forum! Thanks
By the way, when I reattached it, I used the token shown after the “ut_full listall 192.x.y.a 192.x.y.z password” command. The password I used was “password” for the ut_full command, but to reattach the partition, the password was still the one I originally set.
I finally got my Netgear SC101 working again after a reformat of my computer left it as useful as a toaster without a heating element. Here is a link to my blog where I documented my trials, and what I had to do in a step by step fashion to get it working. I hope it works for you. Thanks for all the help on this page, as what got mine working was a smorgasbord of suggestions from all you guys!
Link : http://utkwes.blogspot.com/2007/02/netgear-sc101-satan-takes-form-of.html
RE: David
“Has anyone managed to recover their disks from the SC101.”
Sorry this is a bit dated from your original post but I just got one of my drives to the point where I could prove out that yes you can reformat a drive under windows after removing it from the SC101. I copied everything off of one of the drives in it and removed it. The whole thing was bit scary when I tried to get the one remaining drive to work, it was there but not attached any longer, I went through several reboots and reattached it and was back running, I need to be able to pull the data off of it also so I didn’t want to do anything permanent to it until I was sure the second drive was still accessable. I then cabled the drive I had pulled out of the SC101 to the controller in my PC and booted Windows. At this point the OS does not see it as a valid drive (it isn’t) and you need to go into “Administrative Tools”/”Computer Management”/”Storage”/”Disk Management” and rebuld it. Just to be sure, I deleted the partition, recreated a new NTFS partition and then formatted it. It works fine.
So…..There is indeed life after the SC101.
My plan is to dump the data off the remaining drive and buy a USB drive enclosure to put one of the two I had in the SC101 into, it’s not a NAS but I’m coming to the conclusion that unless you want to spend big bucks on an enterprise level one they’re a waste of time for home use, too slow. My original expectation was that the NAS would equal the speed of writing to another peered PC on the network, not even close! Maybe when they can get them up to the performance of a peered PC I’ll look into them again.
As for the SC101……..??
I suppose the power supply might be useful for something and the unit would actually make a decent door stop, but I’d probably jsut stub my toe on it…..
WORST MISTAKE I MADE WAS NOT READING THESE.
Instead i purchased a Sc101 as well, the sales jargon
mentioned none of these faults or issues, a nas box that you can not allocate an Ip address, what a joke.
I know like the rest of you have to try and get all my data off and one somewhere else and out this peice of Shi* before it damages the pcs attached that are constantly Blue screening.
NETGEAR SUCKS !
If they as a huge company took these back off of us and offered us something better or sorted out the softare and hardware issues it would show they are still in touch with the people. but they obvisouly dont give a shi*
shame before this i purchased loads of netgear kit,
no longer though
I just bought one of these babies >_
I have one for sale…any bids?
Euurgh, today moved the server rack from the office to the cellar, go to the SC101 on MyComputer after the move (everything was on a UPS for 8 months, previous) - whats this? Broken Mirror?
7 years bad luck?
I’m just hoping I can copy all the orders, quotations, customer records, invoices, accounts, spreadsheets off the damned thing before the other disk ‘breaks’.
I’m going to rip the disks out and fit them in an Intel Entry Storage System SS4000-E, and also reinstate my ‘backup everything to another server’ script.
Ahem. I too have an SC101 for sale. Any takers?
I finally moved all of my data off the SC101, I never did lose anything but I never mirrored it either. I ended up buying a Venus DS3 that has a USB2/Firewire 400 interface, it’s not networkable, other than to peer it over my Windows network but I really didn’t need to have it be. Compared to the SC101 it’s lightning fast, copying 50GB in one shot took about 40 minutes over USB, Firewire is faster. Have had not trouble with data corruption etc., had a little trouble getting the Firewire connection to work initially but I think it was just not firmly plugged in. The other nice part is that you can stick an already formatted drive in it and take it with you anywhere and just plug it in, multiple partitions are recognized and mounted in seconds.
Anyone who needs external storage that doesn’t absolutely have to be directly network connected should investigate this route.
My SC101 would be for sale but I don’t want the liability, maybe with a little retooling it would make a good birdhouse or something, but then they might get corrupted too…..
Good luck to those who continue to use it!
I also have this toaster and im more than willing to let it catch fire. I’m running a 400GB and a 250GB with no mirrors and a total of 5 partitions. every time i span a drive it screws up on all 8 machines that i share with. i have to res