With the average consumer's digital storage needs ever increasing, Netgear has released the Stora, a network-attached storage (NAS) unit for the home. While NAS's are usually restricted to the corporate level, the Stora can act as both a storage and media server to almost all computers and devices within the home.
Design and functionality
The Stora is a small, attractive piano black box with three LEDs on the front, a USB port and two cables protruding from the back (power and Ethernet) allowing it to be easily kept out of sight. It's also whisper quiet with a single fan at the top of the unit to provide ventilation.
Opening the unit proved to be a bit of a puzzle at first, with the front panel sliding up and off. But once inside, you can see two hard drive bays that fit 3.5-inch SATA drives snugly. The Stora already comes with a 1TB hard drive, but installing and removing additional ones was as simple as sliding them in and out of the bays with no screws involved.
Set-up of the Stora is done using the supplied CD and involves registering your box on the internet. The packaged software offers a plethora of functions such as restricting access via user accounts, automated backups and media server functionality which were pretty easy to use. Logging into the Stora through the web interface also allows you to create photo albums and slideshows with pictures and videos on the device or upload them to Facebook.
Additionally, Netgear offers a "premium subscription" service allowing access to the NAS from anywhere through a web interface. Impressively, we were able to log into the storage unit and access its files from home while it was connected to the office LAN, despite being behind a firewall. Similarly, you can view your pictures through Cooliris, a neat 3D image browser, or upload your photos to Flickr. These premium functions are nice and they come at the very reasonable cost of US$19.99 annually.
An unfortunate downside to all these functions is the need for an internet connection to access them, even if the Stora is connected to your local network. Changing the settings of the Stora annoyingly involves going through the internet to log into the Stora on your own network. Once set-up though, you won't need to configure the settings often. You can also access the storage space directly via Windows Explorer by using its IP address and a log-in, though you can only transfer files on and off it this way.
As previously mentioned, the Stora can act as a media server for a home network. It's DLNA compliant so it can stream media to game consoles, phones and other media devices. Accessing the Stora through a browser also allows you to stream videos using an in-built flash player or view images in a slideshow.
Performance
Writing data to the Stora through a LAN is a breeze, maintaining a transfer rate of 19MB/s to a single hard disk across a gigabit Ethernet connection. Conversely, the read speed hovered around 29MB/s. Accessing the unit through the internet was obviously slower, but load times were reasonable with log-in taking the longest time.
The Stora can also extend its storage space through USB, whether it be a hard drive or a flash device, and these devices appear as a folder within the unit's file directory. However, we did find that the Stora could not identify one of our USB flash sticks.
While the Stora has two hard drive bays, a second hard drive can only be used for disk mirroring, with the unit automatically configured to RAID 1. While this offers better data security, it comes at the cost of flexibility — simply adding another drive won't give you more space.
Despite this shortcoming, the Netgear Stora fairs well as a storage and media server for the home. It has lots of bells and whistles without too much hassle or a hefty price tag, a good choice for those who want a simple and effective storage solution.
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