Netgear Stora Home Media Network Storage Review

Unboxing the Netgear Stora

The Netgear Stora is a very unassuming Plastic and Aluminum Black box. With a Power LED, two Hard Drive LEds and a USB 2.0 Port, the Plastic front of the Stora would be very at home with any of the Networked Storage Devices on the Market. One thing to note is that the unit seemed as if its plastic shell was very loosely attached. I would have liked to have seen Netgear make the Stora from one solid piece of plastic or aluminum to avoid the rattle in the device.

The front of the Stora is removable by sliding the front of the device downward to remove the plastic clips from their recesses. With the front bezel removed, it exposes the two hard drive bays where any end user can easily add a second hard drive for redundancy purposes. One concern that we had with the device was that after the first time the front bezel was removed, it was hard to keep the bezel on. A simple bump of the unit would often cause the front bezel to slide off. It was only after we slightly bent the plastic prongs on the back of the bezel outwards a bit that the bezel stayed secured on the device.

The back of the Netgear Stora has two latches for hard drive removal, a Gigabit NIC, reset button, power button and jack to plug the power brick in to. Not shown is the Stora Software Key that is smartly printed on a sticker attached to the bottom of the Device. Otherwise, if the end user were to lose the Key that is attached to the paper sleeve that contains the DVD, reinstallation of the Stora Software would be impossible.

Rounding off the package are the manuals, Install CD and high quality Ethernet Cable for the Device.

Our particular unit happens to come pre-populated with a 1TB hard drive. End users can also purchase a diskless model or a 2TB Model. Netgear leaves it up to the end user to purchase a matching hard drive if they wish to add a second hard drive for redudencay purposes. Our unit came pre-populated with a 1TB Hitachi DeskStar 7K100.C 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive.

Let’s move on to setup and test out the Stora!