Buffalo 1TB TeraStation Network Attached Storage

Set to RAID 5, it stores my archival data and is accessed by two PCs - one wired and one wireless. In RAID 5 it gives me 750Gb of storage.

Expect speeds of about 100Mbs tops even on Gb Ethernet (this is due to the max write speed of the disks in the Buffalo and not the network). If you need faster then you'll need to pay for better and faster disks which will essentially entail spending £1000's on a real server.

For the price point, this unit provides superb RAID 5 storage and felxibility. You can attach USB2 external disks to the unit which it can automatically backup to. It can wake / sleep at predefined times and has UPS functionality too.

It's quiet with the occasional clicking noise. Doesn't appear to get too hot and the fan speed varies to keep it cool.

No limit to file size you can store either unlike many other simialr products - mine stores Norton Ghost images which are 200GB files.

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I've just taken delivery of the 1TB - although there was no stock when I ordered it, it still arrived 2 days later which was a plus. There are alot of comments by people who've bought this on the net saying you must upgrade the firmware as soon as you get it - not on the UK site - go to the US Buffalo site and get the firmware from the support pages. I set mine to RAID5 and did the format and then upgraded the firmware. Having done that the transfer speeds are higher. Mine has 4 x 250gig western digital - result. Highly recommended as a large storage device especially for RAID5 - but remains to be seen whether you can take a failed drive out and sling another in easily. :)

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A superb piece of kit.
Plugged it in, ran the configuration software, configured it as a single flat storage area and it worked first time, no messing around and it was in, in under 5 mins.
Highly recommend it as a NAS for windows.

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Purchased a Terastation to provide secure shared storage for three PC clients. No Macs or Linux, so for those users please check other reviews.
Physical: very small, unobstrusive and very quiet. Would easily work at home.
Installation: Completely trouble-free, but the disks look awkward to replace if necessary
Performance: RAID-5 better than local IDE drives, but NB I am using Gigabit. Experienced minor glitch with jumbo frames, but that is more a switch/adapter problem. In all, superb value for money.

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Will this work with a Mac?

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Cheap and so far reliable NSA but can't be backed up by backup software that uses the archive bit (& I haven't found one that doesn't!). The box OS is Unix and doesn't recognise the a windows file archive bit at all, it's always on. So when you try an incremental or differential backup you get everything. Big disadvantage as no RAID array can be considered a back-up.

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I'd like to move my audio files onto a networked drive that i can access wirelessly around the house. They would then be played by iTunes on my laptop and probably played out wirelessly to an airport express.

Would I just need to plug the drive into my wireless router's ethernet port to access the drive as if it were physically connected to my laptop by ethernet? Or am I missing something here?

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Previous poster must remember that mac users are mac users 'cos they DON'T know what they are doing! Suggest mac users take a buffalo linkstation - say the 250 as a good vfm option - it took me about 30 seconds to set one up on a mac network, and I really don't like to touch them...

I would like to hear from anyone who has operated one of these for a while - concerned about seek times, power supply and temperature.

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As buffalo wesite states SMB protocol is supported so you can use this with mac. It also supports FTP ..again can be used with Mac. The previous poster obviously didn't try hard enough.
It also support Gigabit ethernet. There are plenty of websites on google that explain how to make this work with Linux/Unix/Mac.

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This terastation does not work with a mac, takes forever to load data on in the first place, especially if just using 100mb/s, may work better with 1000mb/s but i'm unsure of this. It works perfectly on PCs, no problems except for a slight delay on access time (sometimes up to 2 minutes) Wouldn't recommend to mac users. Dabs service reliable as ever, no problem returning it.

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