Zetera, a developer of network storage technology, recently announced that its Z-SAN technology has been selected by NETGEAR as the foundation for its networked storage solution. This announcement was made this week at CES 2007.

NETGEAR’s Storage Central Turbo (SC101T) extends NETGEAR’s storage product line, Storage Central (SC101), also based on Z-SAN technology, which began shipping in September 2005.

The SC101T allows users to expand storage capacity indefinitely by upgrading to larger SATA hard drives or even by adding additional SC101T devices to the network. Complete with backup and synchronization software to protect against data loss, network storage appears as a letter drive on networked PCs enabling users to access files on the SC101T.

"Two years ago at CES, NETGEAR first announced its partnership with Zetera," noted Chuck Cortright, Zetera’s CEO. "With the announcement of a second product based on our Z-SAN technology, we are extremely proud that they are choosing to extend our successful relationship and we view NETGEAR as a true visionary in the field of network storage for both consumers and small businesses."

Zetera’s SoIP-based Z-SAN technology enables us to offer centralized storage solutions that are expandable, fast, affordable and simple enough for the digital home," commented Patrick Lo, NETGEAR’s chairman and CEO.

SC101T is the mirrored, upgradeable way for consumers and small businesses to store music, photos, videos, and data files and access them at Gigabit speeds. The solution is said to be easy to setup, install and share. Users simply insert one or two 3.5-inch SATA drives of any capacity from any vendor (sold separately) into Storage Central Turbo, connect it to any router or switch, and Smart Wizard takes care of the configuration. Storage Central Turbo functions like a local disk drive making it relatively easy to locate and access important files.

Storage Central Turbo protects data by utilizing advanced backup and synchronization software to mirror data on two separate hard drives. Storage Central Turbo, which enables users to password protect each logical drive to optimize privacy, incorporates a Gigabit Ethernet interface to maximize data transfer speeds. NETGEAR’s Storage Central Turbo (SC101T) is expected to be available in early 2007