Product Details
- Color: Black
- Brand: Netgear
- Model: MS2110
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 11.40" h x
9.10" w x
7.70" l,
3.00 pounds
- Hard Disk: 2000GB
Features
- Showcase digital photos, movies and files anywhere, for anyone
- Experience smooth, jitter-free music and video streaming for multiple users
- Access files and play or view content at home and over the Internet
- Add a second disk drive for data mirroring in seconds
NETGEAR Stora 2-Bay 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage MS2110
Product Description
Includes one 3.5-Inch SATA drive and one open hot-swap bay. Add a spare disk drive at your convenience for automatic data mirroring. Acts as a multimedia hub that serves music, video, photos and files to any device on your home network. High-speed network connection for fast data transfers and streaming performance. Access files and play or view content at home and over the Internet. Integrates with Facebook, iTunes, Picasa2 and Web-enabled phones2
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
33 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
A very serious issue.
By matt
I was very impressed with the Stora's specs and performance when I first bought it. However I have discovered a serious issue with it. To setup and administrate this device you are required to use a web based administration interface hosted on a Netgear affiliated third party server on the Internet. To emphasize, this interface is not on the local Stora device. It is on a remote Internet server which you have no control over. In order to use this interface you must open several ports in your firewall which exposes your network to security risks from the Internet. Over the next few days after configuring the Stora if you watch the network traffic coming from the Stora, you will see that it will attempt to communicate with a couple different Internet servers. I would assume that they are Netgear's or the third party's servers. But why would the Stora need to "Phone Home" on such a frequent basis, or any for that matter? Worse still, if you lock down those ports after the initial setup to stop the Stora from accessing the Internet on it's own, and then reopen them to administrate the device at a later date, your login id will no longer be a valid account associated with your Stora on their remote server and you will no longer be able to change the setup on the local Stora device that you own.Suppose that does not represent a problem for how you wish to use the device. There is another aspect to consider. What will happen when Netgear end of lifes the Stora and takes down their servers? Will you be able to login to the device anymore? That is a question I can't see a positive answer for. I guess Netgear expects that the user would just dispose of the Stora and buy another of their NAS products. I know I won't.I hope that Netgear decides to fix this issue because if it were not for this issue I would have only praise for this device and for Netgear. If they don't, then I will give one of their competitors my future business, including replacing this device in the near future.
38 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
My experiences with Stora - hardware incompatibility but solution found
By Modern Blue Argonaut
What's not to love about the Netgear Stora? On description alone, this sounds like a great product for home users to back up their computers and store their music and picture libraries. Perfect, right?Although this is marketed for the non-technical user, after my experiences, I don't thing Grandma would ever figure this one out.When I first installed the Stora I thought everything was going to work just like indicated. I had the stora set up, registered, password created, and had even added a couple of music files to test it out. Music was streaming perfectly. Then.. I tried to go online to read the owners manual and that is where the fun began. I found when the Stora was turned on that it hijacked my router and blocked Internet access from any other device in the house. Even computers that had never even accessed the Stora or had the Stora desktop applications installed were blocked as well as my squeezebox.I turned off the Stora and cleared the cookies from my computers and restarted them, and I was able to get back onto the Internet. Then I turned the Stora on and it immediately blocked Internet access. I worked for a few hours on my own trying to diagnose the problem and find a workaround. Having no luck, I contacted technical support.I found that Netgear surprisingly had 24/7 technical support, which was excellent at 2:30 am, except for the forty minutes of hold time. The first tech support specialist was a joy to work with. He was patient beyond what could be expected of saints. He went through every troubleshooting idea he could come up with. After spending two hours with me, at my suggestion he agreed I should try to assign an IP address to the Stora rather than allowing my router to auto-assign an IP address. I knew the IP address should be along the lines of 192.168.1.1xx but the tech support specialist told me to set it to 192.168.1.1, and against my better judgement, I put that in. At that point, my router decided he'd had enough and flipped out and kept flashing lights non-stop. My Internet AND Stora access were blocked. The tech support specialist set up a time for a higher level tech support specialist to call me back, and right on schedule I was contacted by Patrick. Patrick quickly ran through the notes and tried a few more things to help me, but finally ascertained that he couldn't fix the problem and suggested I either RMA it or return it to Amazon. He also understood that the Stora and the last tech support specialist made the problem worse so he tried to help me get my network working again even after we had taken the Stora off of the network. It didn't work, but I did appreciate his willingness to help.The technical support specialists we talked to never addressed the issue of a possible hardware conflict, such as my router, but I got to thinking that might be the problem. We run a home business and in a fret of worry about not being able to print out and access tomorrows business I had my husband run to Sam's Club and purchase a new router. I did a system restore on all of the computers in the house to three days prior (and made sure the Stora was not connected in any way to my network, lol). I then installed the new router and my network was resurrected.That got me to thinking.. maybe my router was not compatible with the Stora. Making a leap of faith I printed out tomorrows business and reconnected the Stora. Like magic, I did not get kicked off the Internet. The Stora was still working. I uploaded dozens of albums to the Stora and started streaming music around the house. I finally figured out that my router was incompatible with the Stora. Others on forums have complained that the Stora running blocks their http access. I would suspect that the problem lies in the router, how it assigns IP addresses, and that interacts with the Stora.I don't feel that this product was ready for prime time. I did some backups, but found they did not create what I consider to be a mirror backup. I couldn't scroll through the hierarchy of drives and files like on my Seagate replica, but instead it's the type of backup you would use to restore a system. I also found the backup on this product to be incredibly slow compared to other competing products I've used.I still like using it for streaming music and will probably add another 1TB drive to safeguard my files, but I don't know if the average person would persist through the many hours it took me to get this working correctly.My other complaint is that the PDF user manual was "included" on the setup CD, but in fact it needed to be online to read. In other words, when they say the user manual is on CD, you have to be connected to the Internet to read the manual at their web site. It's not a stand alone PDF accessible straight from the CD. That REALLY frustrated me when I was having problems.One more complaint, if the music folder is a folder within a folder it won't play. For example, if you have eight Michael Jackson albums contained within a folder called "Michael Jackson" and click "autoplay" it won't play any music. You have to manually drill down to get to the album you want.Some reviewers have reported having to open ports on their firewall. I suppose experiences will vary. I set up my Stora using a Windows 7 64-bit operating system with Windows firewall and MSSE. I never had to adjust anything to complete the setup and my network is still secured. Perhaps there are compatibility factors that cause workarounds like disabling your firewall or opening ports.I haven't yet set up the remote access free trial, but plan to give it a try once I have more loaded onto the Stora. I'll update my review and experiences after I try it out.I hope that Netgear improves the Stora software because it has a lot of potential, but in it's current state it has basic functionality, basic storage, basic backup, with remote and network access. With better firmware and software, this product could be a must-have.Pros:Inexpensive90 days free phone support3 year warranty parts & labor1TB storageRemote access for only $20 per yearAbility to add another 3.5" SATA drive and utilize RAID featureNo need to install the desktop apps on additional computers, just access it's assigned IP on your network (192.168.1.?)Can use this as a network printer server by connecting the printer through USBFile upload is very easy - just drag and dropCons:Mirror backup is not a mirror- it's just a backupIncompatibility with some routersFolder management is pretty basicSlow backupsI feel the 90 day free phone support should be longer, at least six months
38 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
Great, Inexpensive, Energy Efficient Solution to Scalable NAS. Airport Extreme Owners Read Special Instructions Below.
By P. Colin McGraw
I used to own the HP MediaSmart Home Server and loved the idea of scalable home storage, but a (since corrected) data corruption bug had me send it back to HP. I was tempted to reinvest in the unit since the problem was corrected, but I became very aware of my home electric usage and didn't like the fact that it sucked 40W at idle 24/7. Storage appliances should be energy efficient if always-on!That's why I was intrigued by the Stora. It's a simpler, though not quite as robust solution that does exactly what I want and, as it turns out, draws about a quarter of the electricity of the MediaSmart at idle (and is documented to have a sleep mode besides).All of this, plus it's only $200, which is much less than the MediaSmart's $400-600 price tag and isn't too much more than some non-network ready external hard drives of similar size!As for my impression of the capabilities of the Stora, for me, I don't need a lot of frills in a NAS, I mainly want a lot of storage for all the iTunes video I buy and I want the ability to back it up, since I amassed about $1,000 worth of digital media that I don't want to lose.In this regard, the Stora delivers! 1 TB is a decent amount of space, and having your content automatically backed up is as simple as adding any old 1 TB drive to the second hot-swappable bay. You can add an additional disk via USB and the performance of the Stora is good enough to be the source of my iTunes library and stream video and music over my wireless network to my Apple TV/computer with no skipping.The Stora was also instantly recognized by iTunes on my computer (shared playlist) and my PS3 (video share) with no effort on my part! For my purposes I need to have the Stora be the source of my iTunes library vs. just having that shared playlist (so I can also stream video/use an Airport Express' speakers, etc.), but it's nice to know the feature works effortlessly.The Stora also offers some value-added capability that some may find compelling. It's possible to use it as a source for computer backups, including Time Machine compatibility for we Mac users, you can enable FTP access locally and/or over the internet, and if you pay for a subscription service, you have the ability to do things like have your photos automatically added to Facebook. However, since I use iPhoto to do the same thing for free, I'm not really sold on the value of such a service.I do have a few gripes with the unit, however, and they're worth considering both as part of your purchasing decision, and in case you run into the same problems I did.First, the setup program is currently incompatible with Airport Extreme routers (because of lack of UPnP?). The installer doesn't give any user feedback so it's difficult to tell what's happening, but basically it has trouble finding the Stora.Because of this quirk, I spent an hour on the phone with a not-so-helpful support rep before I ended up suggesting that we try to access the Stora by IP address to see if we can set it up that way, which, luckily, it turns out you can. For those wondering, to determine the IP address of the Stora if you have an Airport Extreme, you need to go to "Airport Utility" then select your router, click the "Wireless Clients" label to see detailed information, then lookup the Stora under DHCP clients. Once you have the IP address, you can type it into your browser and run setup on the unit.A second gripe is that authentication happens through Netgear's servers if you want to reach the administration pages of your router. This isn't a problem if you're just accessing the NAS on your local network (despite what some other reviewers have claimed), but it is an issue if you want to change the unit's settings. You have to rely on Netgear to maintain their servers indefinitely or there may be problems tweaking the units in the future.Lastly, the drives in the Stora are apparently formatted with some kind of proprietary file format... UPDATE/CORRECTION: I've been informed that the file format is simply XFS, so if your Stora fails, getting data off the drives may be complicated for non-Linux users, but not impossible.All in all, however, the Stora is a great, relatively energy-efficient home storage solution that gets the job done capably, but may require a little bit of technical knowhow for fringe situations. I'd recommend it, despite its limitations.
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