Netgear delves into consumer NAS market with $229 1TB Stora
By Darren Murph 
posted Sep 21st 2009 8:30AM
posted Sep 21st 2009 8:30AM
It's compatible with Mac, Linux and Windows platforms, it can double as an iTunes or DLNA server and it ships in a two-bay configuration that is automatically setup to mirror data. Oddly enough, the $229 MS2110 model includes only a single 1TB drive, though we definitely prefer this setup over having twin 500GB HDDs; after all, any shopper worth their salt can snap up an extra 1TB unit for a lot less than Netgear would sell it to 'em.Oh, and we're told that an "optional yearly premium service to support additional remote access and third-party service integration such as Flickr and mobile phones is available for $19.99 after an initial 30-day trial period," but frankly, that doesn't sound appealing at all.
NETGEAR'sStora Brings Easy-to-Use, Internet-connected Storage to Consumers Everywhere
New Storage Device with Remote Access Enables Home Users to Share Photos with Friends without Uploading to Internet Sites
SAN JOSE, Calif. - September 21, 2009 - NETGEAR®, Inc. (NASDAQGM: NTGR),a worldwideprovider of technologically innovative, branded networking solutions, and network storage leader in the business and prosumer market with its ReadyNAS® line, today announced NETGEAR Stora, a new, easy-to-use network attached storage (NAS) device for home media. Stora enables consumers to easily centralize photos, music, movies and files and use them on nearly any network device. With a smooth user interface designed for non-technical users, Stora lets consumers easily share their photos and videos with friends without the time-consuming process of uploading them to Internet sites or transferring them over email. Through an intuitive and graphical user interface on www.MyStora.com, users and their designated friends and relatives can remotely access their media files from any Internet-connected device, such as laptops, PCs and smartphones.
"We strongly feel that Stora exemplifies the next-generation of consumer storage devices," said Drew Meyer, director of marketing for NETGEAR's Network Storage Business Unit. "NETGEAR has already made its mark in the business and prosumer market with our ReadyNAS line, but Stora is most definitely a platform for everyone.Stora gives users the features they need today with a consumer-friendly user interface and price point, making their media available to them and their designated friends and families anytime, anywhere-even on mobile smartphones. It truly sets a new bar for the consumer network storage market."
Store:Compatible with Mac, PC and Linux systems, NETGEAR'sStora puts music, movies, photos, and filesat the heart of the home network, centralized in a single, safe location.
Share:With remote access via www.MyStora.com, Stora enables cross-platform file sharing, music listening, movie watching and photo sharing from any Internet-connected device. In addition to sharing files over the web, users can also share photos, videos and files between home computers and home media players. Stora can centralize music collections and play music through iTunes. It can also automatically integrate content with remote photo frames and social networking sites such as Facebook. Stora can also serve content to other networked devices such as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-enabled photo frames, XBox 360and PlayStation3 game consoles, andiPhone and Blackberrymobile phones.
Protect:With two standard drive bays that automatically mirror data, Stora offers plug-and-play protection that safeguards valuable data. Users can simply add a second drive, on the fly, without any tools. Stora also comes with automatic backup utilities for PCs and Macs, so individual system content is backed up regularly.
"Today's consumers face a conundrum when trying to manage newly acquired or created digital content among various computing devices inside and outside the home," said David Reinsel, group vice president of IDC's storage and semiconductor research groups."Historically, personal storage devices have proven competent at providing reliable storage capacity and data protection within the home, but not always accessible from outside the home or across multiple devices. With this new product, NETGEAR looks to solve these common problems for consumers."
NETGEAR Stora (MS2110) comes with a 1 TB disk and one extra drive bay that can be used to insert an optional disk for mirroring. The productis immediately available through selected North American retail and e-commerce stores. Stora will be available from leading European and Asia Pacific retail locations in approximately two weeks. Stora is backed by a three-year warranty and 24/7 technical supportand the Stora (MS2110) model has an MSRP in the U.S. of $229. An optional yearly premium service,to support additional remote access and third-party service integrationsuch as Flickrand mobile phones,is available for $19.99 after an initial 30-day trial period.
New Storage Device with Remote Access Enables Home Users to Share Photos with Friends without Uploading to Internet Sites
SAN JOSE, Calif. - September 21, 2009 - NETGEAR®, Inc. (NASDAQGM: NTGR),a worldwideprovider of technologically innovative, branded networking solutions, and network storage leader in the business and prosumer market with its ReadyNAS® line, today announced NETGEAR Stora, a new, easy-to-use network attached storage (NAS) device for home media. Stora enables consumers to easily centralize photos, music, movies and files and use them on nearly any network device. With a smooth user interface designed for non-technical users, Stora lets consumers easily share their photos and videos with friends without the time-consuming process of uploading them to Internet sites or transferring them over email. Through an intuitive and graphical user interface on www.MyStora.com, users and their designated friends and relatives can remotely access their media files from any Internet-connected device, such as laptops, PCs and smartphones.
"We strongly feel that Stora exemplifies the next-generation of consumer storage devices," said Drew Meyer, director of marketing for NETGEAR's Network Storage Business Unit. "NETGEAR has already made its mark in the business and prosumer market with our ReadyNAS line, but Stora is most definitely a platform for everyone.Stora gives users the features they need today with a consumer-friendly user interface and price point, making their media available to them and their designated friends and families anytime, anywhere-even on mobile smartphones. It truly sets a new bar for the consumer network storage market."
Store:Compatible with Mac, PC and Linux systems, NETGEAR'sStora puts music, movies, photos, and filesat the heart of the home network, centralized in a single, safe location.
Share:With remote access via www.MyStora.com, Stora enables cross-platform file sharing, music listening, movie watching and photo sharing from any Internet-connected device. In addition to sharing files over the web, users can also share photos, videos and files between home computers and home media players. Stora can centralize music collections and play music through iTunes. It can also automatically integrate content with remote photo frames and social networking sites such as Facebook. Stora can also serve content to other networked devices such as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-enabled photo frames, XBox 360and PlayStation3 game consoles, andiPhone and Blackberrymobile phones.
Protect:With two standard drive bays that automatically mirror data, Stora offers plug-and-play protection that safeguards valuable data. Users can simply add a second drive, on the fly, without any tools. Stora also comes with automatic backup utilities for PCs and Macs, so individual system content is backed up regularly.
"Today's consumers face a conundrum when trying to manage newly acquired or created digital content among various computing devices inside and outside the home," said David Reinsel, group vice president of IDC's storage and semiconductor research groups."Historically, personal storage devices have proven competent at providing reliable storage capacity and data protection within the home, but not always accessible from outside the home or across multiple devices. With this new product, NETGEAR looks to solve these common problems for consumers."
NETGEAR Stora (MS2110) comes with a 1 TB disk and one extra drive bay that can be used to insert an optional disk for mirroring. The productis immediately available through selected North American retail and e-commerce stores. Stora will be available from leading European and Asia Pacific retail locations in approximately two weeks. Stora is backed by a three-year warranty and 24/7 technical supportand the Stora (MS2110) model has an MSRP in the U.S. of $229. An optional yearly premium service,to support additional remote access and third-party service integrationsuch as Flickrand mobile phones,is available for $19.99 after an initial 30-day trial period.
cause cleary the SC101 lanched in 05 doesn't count... :S
The SC101 is not strictly NAS. (I.e. It does not appear as a windows or linux share on the network). It requires a driver to be installed onto each machine that wants to access it.
Yup previous Netgear NAS things were Windows-only, or using some crappy special drivers to access it.
Real NAS is what the people want.
Though, 1TB drive costs $70, what exactly is Netgear doing with the remaining $150?
Right now, I'd prefer connecting my USB hard drives to a $79 Fonera 2.0n http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/general/launching-the-fonera-20n.html
I'd rather freenas and spend 229 on drives.
I really don't understand the cost of these NAS devices. There is no reason why they should even cost this much.
I could build an Intel Atom based PC running freenas and kit it out with drives for less. Giving me the flexibility to add more drives in the future.
Yeah, for more money you can build a larger box that uses more energy, that's great.
This is actually a pretty good price for what you're getting.
A regular desktop can use $15 of electricity per month.
Oh poo, they couldn't have put a lick of paint on the back too?
Bare Aluminum sinks heat better as the paint typically acts as an insulator
Does it have the same BitTorrent management system that is so highly regarded on the the ReadyNAS units?
At this price point, probably not
You could probably put it on yourself - I know you can with the cheap Maxtor NAS drives (CentralAxis, Maxtor shared storage etc).If you can root the device, and the processor/mem is ok that is.
So Questions
If you put in another 1 TB drive can you have 1TB of storage in a raid 0 setup?
Can you still access the NAS over the internet without the 19.99 and is that a month or a year for the fee.
Why not Sell a 2TB single driver version or just sell it with no drive at all? Why do I have to add $30 to my cost for a 1TB drive thats going in the garbage?
In the garbage? Why? Is it a maxtor? Surely you can use a 1TB drive for something, don't be silly.
My DIY Nas cost a bit more than this, but has Gigabit Ethernet... However, I see the niche this fills. There are people who want more storage over their network and don't want to mess around with it. Actually, are there? Are there people who fill the small gap between those who have a home network, use it, but know nothing about it, and those who use their network, and know everything about it?
I realize FreeNAS isn't for everyone, but it's getting there.
My DIY cost a little bit more, but where it counts. I spent my cash on the hard drives, a gigabit card, and two sata controller cards. I used openfiler for the SW and an old 2ghz P4 for the system.
My total cost was around $900 (mostly in hdds).
I was pretty disappointed about was the fact that an empty drive bay storage system cost upwards of $200 and could only house 4-5 drives.
I wasn't about to shell out the cash for an empty nas that couldn't even hold all of my drives . So I dug up an old AT power supply for additional power and installed it into an old computer case to house all of my drives directly next to the P4 machine. It isn't pretty, but the whole thing hides in the closet anyways and is probably far cheaper than what I would have had to pay if I wanted the commercial enclosure.
Overall it has served well with XBMC and was far cheaper than what is on the market now.
I was excited until I realized it was wireless only how come noe gigabit baby..... Come on how much more would it have been really... FAIL
What'd I miss? The 3rd picture shows a network connection that's labeled 10/100 and 1000, and the Netgear specs say 10/100/1000 Ethernet.
where does it say in the press release wireless only? in fact the picture even SHOWS gig ethernet. your statement.... FAIL
Your right I missed it the datasheet on the netgear site shows wireless N but not Gigabit had to look at the specifications page...
So is it this for 229 or do I get the Ready Nas Duo 1TB for $349 with a $100 mail in rebate through Newegg......
Right now Newegg has the ReadyNas Duo with 1 TB drive for $349 with a $100 mail in rebate make it $249.00 I think I need to go buy that now. Its a no brainer you get way much more for $20 more than this Stora....
i don't understand why all of these companies think us silly home consumers only could ever want two drives in our nas devices. Seems like to get anything with 4, 5, 6 drive bays means we have to buy a "business" device which also comes with a huge markup.
I am maybe one of the few interested in this. I currently have a ReadyNas Duo, and while it works pretty well the underlying software is pretty much junk. File permissions screw up all the time, thankfully Netgear knows this an thoughtfully includes a checkbox to reset them in the Nas configuration web page, but they don't take the time to actually fix the problem.... Plus I have seen multiple times where the device will create folders name for the first letter of each directory you have. So if you have folders named Dog and Cat, it would create two empty folders named D and C... Again they don't seem to care to fix these problems. So depending on what type of backend is on this device it might actually be better.
Does anyone know of a NAS that has local USB or firewire support?
Basically, a NAS USB drive hybrid, so you could access files locally at USB/firewire speeds, but still access the device over a network link?
Maybe you could achieve this by leveraging TCP/IP over firewire?
I just have never found a device that would do this.
With the external internet access and automatic mirroring, this seems to be growing out of traditional NAS functionality and into Windows Home Server territory. If fact, is there very much that WHS does that this doesn't do?
Auwww.. No Nas reference? I was expecting to see some illmatic-like image somewhere in there..
I was looking for a Nas Pic
Would it really be so much more expensive to have 3 bays and create something that is actually, you know, *worthwhile*?
RAID-0 is pretty much an oxymoron (there's no redundancy). RAID-1 is just an expensive way to do real-time backup.
With 3 disks, you could do RAID-5 and have some actual redundancy and protection when one of those 1TB disks inevitably goes bad. Heck, I'd even settle for a box with no internal bays and 3 USB or eSATA connectors.
I wonder, does anyone know how many fans this thing will have? I'm actually close to putting together my own NAS solution (with either a Celeron ULV or an Atom), and one of the things I'm going for is a fanless setup. I'll be using two drives and RAID, and this doesn't look half bad.
Does anyone know if there is a NAS in existence with HDMI out. My dream is to be able to save video files to NAS storage and replay them via hardwire to my TV. In my experience, relying on media servers and the PS3 leads to extremely laggy video playback.