The Netgear SC101 looks like a small toaster, into which you install one or two ATA hard drives (not supplied, see the compatibility list), and then attach it to your network.

It provides storage that can be accessed by other computers on the same network, and can be configured with several private partitions and mirrored partitions to protect your data. In these days of massive music and video libraries, it doesn't make sense to tether your data to one computer. Much better to find a way of sharing the data with other computers without leaving PCs turned on all the time. And of course, the more data you have on your PC, the greater the chore to back it all up.

This is the sort of device that promises to help soothe an increasingly paranoid mind. For those who have developed a healthy mistrust of computers, it's not enough simply to hope that data remains intact. For many people, it would be a catastrophe to lose a hard drive now. Also, many homes now have more than one computer that needs backing up, so the Netgear product seems like a good proposal; it comes without hard drives for a reasonable price, and users add their own drives according to requirements. Also bundled is some backup software, SmartSync Pro.

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The device is built around a massive heatsink, which lends support to the nickname 'toaster'. There are images on the Internet of SC101 units with eggs cooking on top, and various cooling mods that have been attempted to cool it down.

You would do well to choose less power-hungry drives than the ultra-cheap Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 devices that we installed, since this should translate directly to lower heat (see this article about hard drive power consumption). At least it makes a good foot-warmer. Aside from this, the design of the unit is neat, unobtrusive and simple.

After quickly scanning the install guide to see if there were any 'gotchas', we plugged in two new, cheap, 80GB IDE drives and attached it to the network. Lights flashed for a while and it settled on the power and network lights. All good so far.

The test network has two DHCP servers, purely through accident. This wasn't planned, and many home users will be in a similar position. The ADSL adapter has a DHCP server and firewall built-in. This is connected to a wireless router, which also has a DHCP server and a firewall, but also several RJ45 ports in the back, which is why it's there. Finally, the test PC has Norton firewall, but we'd also forgotten to turn off the Windows XP firewall. That makes no fewer than four firewalls, yet it's a fairly typical home network.

This is a problem. It takes some configuration of the routers to put them both on the same network subnet and turn off one of the DHCP servers, then allow UDP data through port 20001 before the PC can see the SC101. It is not Netgear's fault, but the average home user seems to need to know much more about network fundamentals these days to get anything to work.

Finally, we increased the DHCP lease time because the device was manically grabbing new IP addresses. In normal operation, this unit needs around 5 IP addresses to operate - one for each physical drive, one for each partition, and, er, some more for good measure. We don't expect this would cause the typical home network any real issues, but could affect some businesses.

The SC101 performs quite well. The device is accessed by 10/100Mbps ethernet, which might be seen as a limitation, but block-level transfer of data helps write speeds reach about 6MB/s for non-mirrored configurations, or 3MB/s for mirrored drives. It's a neatly designed device that has mirroring capabilities and useful partitioning capabilities to create several private or public areas on the installed disks, which can be password-protected.

Netgear calls it a NAS device and touts block-level transfer as a performance feature. However, this is a network-connected device, so speeds are not going to be out of this world. Don't expect to be able to use the drive for video editing, for example. A better bet for speed-critical storage might be an external SATA enclosure.

Probably the biggest gripe we have with the SC101 is the lack of support for non-Microsoft platforms. Support is for Windows 2000 and XP only, and users who think that they can get around this will be disappointed. Unlike other NAS devices that are just mapped to a drive letter, the SC101 actually does require a driver to operate, so it's not possible to map the drive manually in Mac OS X or Linux after configuring it in Windows. However, Netgear is purportedly developing drivers for Mac and Linux, so it's worth checking the current status before making a decision to purchase.

A great concept, especially for home users with more than one PC, and also for small businesses. It's perhaps let down a bit by flaky software and lack of support for non-Microsoft platforms. Best to check the Netgear site before buying if you're planning to use older hard drives or use Apple Macs or Linux clients.