Product Description

Buffalo's TeraStation Home Server Series of Terabyte Network Attached Storage offers powerful storage, server and multimedia solutions for both the SMB and consumer markets. Combining advanced fault tolerant data solutions, robust file security and Gigabi

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129264 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Buffalo
• Model: HS-D1.0TGL/R5-1
• Released on: 2006-03-31
• Dimensions: 21.12 pounds

Customer Reviews

Good but slow
I've had problems with the access speed of the Buffalo Terastation similar to the previous reviewers and I'll check out the framesize to see if that is the culprit as I'm not convinced the network hub I'm using is an issue.

I have no problem sharing out multiple folders or using the management interface, it's all very good.

The only problem is copying files to the device; and when those are 10Gb backup files it's a long wait for them to finish.

Good, but subject to limitations and care is needed
Let me start by saying that the basic unit is indeed a good one and probably worth purchaseing provided you have no specialist/unusual uses in mind for it.

The good news: It is quiet, relatively easy to install and configure and the fact that it is network attached means it is easy to use.

I purchased the 1TB machine with the intention of later upgradeing to teh 2TB by changeing the 4 x 250MB disks for 4 x 500MB disks perhaps next year when the 500MB disks are cheap enough - i.e. it is the same chassis for the 1 and 2 TB machines. If you do not truely need up to 1TB of contiguous space - this device may not be cost effective or helpful

The bad news: It is all in the detail and the exceptions...
Whilst I am quite prepared to believe that there are some usability functions that I have not fully come to grips with and that they might even be altered by astute configuration changes, but, the fact is that these are the problems that I have found and I want to share them with you as you may hit the same problems and they could affect the true value of the item and your decision to purchase.

1) The speed of data transfer IS an issue. I have tested the device in multiple modes and experience performance problems in all of them. The issues seem to arise with both large and multiple small files and with slow and fast networks. I have tried all frame size options (3) and find that transfers surge-and-quieten so that bandwidth utilisation is exceptionally low.
2) I even tried a back to back (i.e. hub-less connection with traffic exculsively to-from the Terastation and even at Gigabit speeds) and with any frame size, flow is slow and subject to inefficient surges.
3) Most crippleing of all is that if you place files on the Terastation and then chose to move them at some future date from say one directory to another - but on the same Terastation, the Terastation seems to do this by a physical move on the disk(s) rather than the 'obvious' solution that you would expect whereby the machine simply changes it's directory pointers in an instant. This menas that you may need to plan your implementation carefully and avoid stageing files/directories for later moves - it is ultra slow!
This observation is on the standard RAID 1 configuration that the device is delivered with - I would hope/wish on the single disk configuration this would not be a problem, but I cannot vouch for that.
4) Security is minimal/poor and implemented in a Workgroup environment via user id's and group affiliation - not option to do this based on workgroup computer name or by encyption.
I found that it did not meet my needs, and ...
5) There is no encyption option on the Terastation (that I could see) nor is there any compression option (that I could see) as the file system is not NTFS inside of the box.
Therefore, when asking XP Professional to set up the file/directory as encrypted it cannot do it to the remote Terastation on behalf of the Terastation.

Also:
a) I found that the device becomes inaccessible on frequent occasions and re-logging back in with the user ID appears to be necessary.
b) Backups (using the included Memeo software are clumsy and not at all easy to understand where the information is stored and not exactly simple to do recovery.
c) The backup software does NOT include system files - it is orientated around user files only - which is probably acceptable for most implementations. If you need to back up your C: drive (systen disk) this is NOT going to do it. It is however apparently functional for user files which is probably acceptable. I have been using Ghost and MS Backup for the system drives instead.
c) The device does not seem happy with unusual file names, i.e. specifically Polish and Chinese (PRC) file names. Copies frequently fail and or name changes occur and that is basically unacceptable.
If you have no foreign file names then this may not bother you, but it worries me!

So to repeat/summarise, the device is good if you have no unusual requirements and if you carefully plan for it's usage and implementation.

Good while it works
Despite what one reviewer said here, it can stream bigger than 250GB drive. It has 4 x 250GB hard drives, and when configured as RAID-5 (default settings) it provides effectively 750GB of storage space. The idea being one hard drive can fail and be replaced without losing any data. I just simply shared a folder and happily streaming videos and music. Both to my Buffalo LinkTheater, and to my Roku Soundbridge.

However, I also agree with that same reviewer on other points. It's very slow copying data onto it. I resorted to using Beyond Compare to offer more reliable file copies just incase the connection was dropped in the middle of a big file copy (which happened with normal file copy)

It's also decided to continually do disk checking. I'm waiting now for it to finish. Probably be done in the next day or two if I'm lucky. SOOO SLOW doing that. I've no idea why it's doing it either, but could be due to it locking up several times for no reason.

So, in summary, it was working okay. Slow copy to it, but did stream fine. Nice and quiet.

Now I have problems. May need to send it back. Not good as I bought it for secure copy of my photos, videos, etc. Difficult to get the data back off it again.

Use it for streaming stuff, but DON'T use for reliable backup!

B.