I’ve been waiting a long for a networkable storage device that accepts IDE or SATA hard drives… and finally one is here (or at least will be here shortly). Introducing the Netgear SC101 Storage Central.

Engadget has a post on it as does Tom’s Hardware. Not much detail on the specs yet, but it looks like it will support two hard drives and will support a couple of flavors of RAID. The BIG turnoff is that it’s a Netgear product. I’ll probably never purchase a Netgear product again after what I went through with my old Netgear wireless router — the WGT624 (v2).

Of course, there are lots of options besides the SC101’s bring-your-own-hard-drives option. Linksys makes the NSLU2 that accepts USB-based drives instead of IDE or SATA drives. Asus makes the WL-HDD2.5 that is a wireless data storage device that takes 2.5” IDE drives. However, it only takes one drive so no RAID, and 2.5” (laptop) drives are rather expensive and limited in storage (when compared to desktop 3.5” drives). Mirra also makes a highly-rated NAS solutions that include(s) the drive(s), but are somewhat more expensive. And finally, there is the Buffalo Technology 1 TB TeraStation at about $1000 — if that’s not enough storage, they also offer a 1.6 TB TeraStation!

Regarding networking any of these devices with Windows, Jeff recommends using IP address to avoid the Windows Networking hell of Windows domains/workgroups. Yes, it’s 2005 and Microsoft still can’t get networking right.

Oh, anybody know what the heck the device pictured below is? I found it on Linksys’ site. It’s the graphic that leads you to their mini-site on NAS devices. It sure looks like a NAS box that accepts drive caddies. If so, I want one!

Update: 2005-06-11
Rob in the comments notes that the mystery picture is a Linksys EFG80. I don’t know if they are still selling it, but here’s a review on it from January, 2003 (in a quick search, I couldn’t find it online). I’d be stoked if Linksys were to update it, and add stuff like an automatic backup.