If you need a large amount of shared storage for your small-business or home network, there are few easier or cheaper ways to add it than with Buffalo's TeraStation network-attached storage box. We looked at a 1TB version costing £569 (ex. VAT, or £668 inc. VAT). The TeraStation also provides four USB 2.0 ports for attaching more drives to increase the gigabyte count or serve as backup devices. You can also use one of the USB ports to connect a USB printer, allowing the TeraStation to double as the Windows or Apple print server for your network.
The silver-hued TeraStation resembles a PC subwoofer or the centre unit from a compact stereo, standing 16.8cm wide, 24cm deep and 22cm high. The front panel houses a small power switch and two USB ports on the left side and a large, circular drive-status display in the centre, with three additional power, diagnostic and network-link status LEDs providing feedback on the device's current state. The back of the unit is dominated by a large fan outlet. Also on the back are a standard three-prong power-cord jack, two more USB 2.0 ports, the RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port and a serial port for monitoring an uninterruptible power supply. There's a chassis hook for cabling the unit in place to prevent theft. All TeraStations employ four 7,200rpm ATA/100 hard drives that can be configured in a variety of ways: Standard, or non-RAID mode, where each drive operates independently; Spanning mode, where the four drives are combined into a single striped unit for increased performance; RAID 1 mode, where you'll see two 250GB drives, each of which is mirrored for data redundancy and safety; and RAID 5, where three drives are combined into a single 750GB unit, and the fourth functions as a parity drive for data protection, which you can use to restore your data should one of the drives fail (capacities refer to the 1TB version we tested). All configuration and management is done via a Web browser using Buffalo's well-designed and intuitive HTML application. Type in the assigned URL, enter your username and password, and you're off and running. In all modes, you access the TeraStation over the network, not as a local drive. Although the four drives are hot-swappable, getting to them can be a trial. Unlike LaCie's Biggest F800, which has a door on the front for each drive for quick and easy access, you'll have to dismantle the TeraStation's casing, starting with the rubber feet and screws on its bottom. TeraStations now ship with Tanagra's Memeo Windows software for backing up your PC (the TeraStation has its own backup utility for backing itself up to external USB disks). The software works well and is easy to use, but requires extra disk space for installing Microsoft's .Net. We didn't like the forced reboot of the Memeo install routine (there should be a Reboot Later option) or the numerous GUI glitches, such as truncated text in Windows Large Font/120dpi display mode. If you bought a TeraStation before Buffalo started shipping it with Memeo, you can download the software for free from Buffalo Technologies' Web site. Buffalo provides a utility -- the TeraNavigator Client Utility -- that you may have to use to tweak the default settings, depending on what type of network you install the TeraStation on. That brings us to our gripes about the product. The TeraStation doesn't default to using DHCP to automatically grab an IP address. We had to use the included utility to enable DHCP before we could access the unit. Secondly, the utility always launches Internet Explorer instead of your default Web browser -- in this case, Mozilla Firefox. Those are relatively picky complaints, considering the product's overall ease of use and setup. Basically you plug in the unit's power cord, run an Ethernet cable from your PC or router to the TeraStation, and you're ready to go. The TeraStation's speed is of course limited by your network's transmission rate. Most small-business or home networks transmit at 100Mbps, though the TeraStation itself supports Gigabit Ethernet. In our informal tests, the TeraStation managed to write our 400MB mixed folder of files at 3.31MB per second and our 1.9GB image file at 4.26MB per second, which is perfectly acceptable for backup and light office usage. Copying the data back was even faster: 4.76MB per second and 7.98MB per second for the 400MB folder and the 1.9GB image file, respectively. That's plenty fast enough to stream DVDs or other multimedia content. Buffalo Technologies backs the TeraStation with a two-year warranty, which is reasonable; however, a three- or five-year warranty is what most users would like on at least the enclosure, if not the drives as well. Telephone support is available at 8.5p a minute, while online support is decent -- although the TeraStation is called 'Terabyte Network Attached Storage' in the Downloads section, making resources for the unit hard to find.Specifications
| Networking | |
|---|---|
| Network / host interface | Gigabit Ethernet |
| Network transport protocols | TCP/IP, AppleTalk, SMB, FTP, UPS |
| General | |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 16.8x22x24 cm |
| Weight | 7.2 kg |
| Hard drives | |
| Maximum capacity | 1000 TB |
| Expand | |
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Member reviews
Our file server is a single disk based pc which we replaced with a terstation to speed up file transfers - WRONG. The terastaion takes twice as long to read/write files as the pc does
- 6.00 out of 10
6.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I bought one last August. It did not stay connected to my network, and then the fan started to buzz badly. I went through about 5 hours of tech support calls to have them tell me to send it in (at my cost). The turn around time wasn't bad about 5 days. The unit I got back was again defective, this time bad HD (I think) and again have the option of their RMA process where I pay the "retail" cost on my credit card, they ship another and when I pay to ship the defective unit, they reverse the charge. They are absoulty not willing to help me in any other way. I have to go to my credit card's buyer protection plan to get a refund (I am still forced to pay for shipping for the 3rd time on this unit). I experienced over 1 hour wait times to even speak to a tech support person. When attempting to escalate the issue, each support tech is the most senior supervisor and there is no one above them to deal with??????
Turns out this unit has some variant of a Windows OS (4.9??) w/o any logging or trouble shooting tools. The drives are almost impossible to replace (take a close look at the documentation at their site). Their customer service is terse and ineffective.
There are better products out there for the same cost (http://www.newisys.com/products/na-1400.html).
- 4.00 out of 10
4.00 out of 10Definitely good value for money if you are not worried about transfer speeds, but for a device allegedly gigabit capable, you might expect transfer speeds to be more than 3Mb/s? This is to and from a server regularly clocked at 40-50Mb/s, so it is definitely the Terastation. We have several gigabytes a day to backup and frequently are finding the transfer has not finished by the next morning.
So near and yet so far.
- 6.50 out of 10
6.50 out of 10File transfer speed is agonizingly slow! We intended to use the unit to back up servers. Forget it! Three days now and 66 GB of data has not yet been backed up, plus it QUITS in the middle of a backup. Phone tech support is non-existent - always a "heavy call volume".
- 4.00 out of 10
4.00 out of 10Had mine for several weeks now.
Configured 1TB as RAID 5 (main reason for purchase was to keep a backup copy of photos/videos/music & RAID 5 seemed like a good compromise between storage capacity & security) giving 750GB actual storage.
Setting the unit up was easy via the browser.
Over the first weekend I backed up 300GB from my PC. Both PC & Terastation are wired to my 100Mbps router - I had considered upgrading the router & PC network adaptor but now I'm not so sure as this didn't appear to be the bottleneck.
It streams video to PCs wired to the router ok so the router will only be replaced to improve wireless performance.
The only things I haven't sorted out yet are setting up a printer on one of the USB ports and setting up different rights for different users (it comes with 2 users admin & guest already configured).
It may not be the fastest device of this type on the market but for the present my main concern was capacity and there was nothing else close to this for the price.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10