- Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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0.5 stars
"Lots of Storage, NOT Datasafe, Zero support"
Pros: It holds a lot of data
Cons: If you loose a disk, you have to reform the array and loose all your data
Summary: Do NOT buy this product as a backup or safe data storage. It is not meant for that, despite it?s RAID capabilities. I have been using mine for approx 4 months when one of my drives went out. As expected, the system went on working fine, warning me that I had a bad drive. After 6 (six!!) unanswered emails to techsupport about a drive replacement, another drive started getting bad sectors. In RAID 5, one bad drive is fine but two is a crisis. In theory, that?s highly statistically improbably. Finally, after multiple more emails Buffalo answered with ?we?ll send you an entire new unit.? Fine, I?ll just swap out the drives I need.
So, before the unit arrives I start backup up my data from the TeraStation. It was hard finding a place for 2 terabytes worth of data but I?m very, very glad I did. More on that in a moment.
Unit arrives and I easily swap out the bad drive and let the array rebuild. I?m giddy with excitement. It takes a while but after it?s complete, I do the same with disk two. Fantastic, I think. Disks swapped for new good ones, auto-rebuild of the array and we are off and running.
I access the share subdir on the Terastation and for some reason I don?t have permission to access that folder. I reboot the Terrastation (because I?ve been trained by Windows ? when in doubt, reboot.) No effect. I mess with other setting all to no avail.
Finally, I email techsupport who says reset the unit to factory defaults and claims that this won?t cause any loss of data. Shudder, I think, but fine. I?ve got my data backed up anyway. Reset ? no good.
Techsupport responds: ?delete the array and recreate it should give you access to the share subdir.? I?ll repeat that one more time: ?delete the array and recreate it should give you access to the share subdir?!!! The array, containing the data I consider sooo precious that I bought a stand-alone unit that runs RAID5 for safety, I?m supposed to delete it! So I can have access to it again!??
Wow, not only have they failed miserably for tech support, they completely failed to stand up to what their product was DESIGNED TO DO ? store data safely and reliably. I?ll quote this right off their web page:
"Massive storage for your home or SOHO network, all with the peace of mind of RAID 5. RAID 5 continually provides redundancy, protecting your data from a drive failure."
From what I've experienced, if you lose one drive, you've lost all your data because the Terrastation will never give you access to that data again after you replace a drive.
"....quick-swap SATA hard drives...."
Yes, it was quick and easy to swap the drive but consider the total time spent:
> 1 month from 1st contact with tech support
~1 week until box arrived
~1 hour to replace first drive
~6 hours to rebuild drive (automatic)
~1 hour to replace second drive
~6 hours to rebuild drive (automatic)
QUICK was not a word I'd describe this experience wtih.
