Entered CNET Catalog: 03/02/2006
SKU: HS-D1.0TGL/R5
Manufacturer: Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc.
Manufacturer 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 Gigabit Ethernet networking, TeraStation allows users to deploy a simple, cost-effective data or media server to their office or home network in literally minutes without cutting corners on features or expandability. By offering a total of four USB 2.0 ports, the device can accommodate additional external USB hard drives for expanded networked storage or as backup targets. Additionally, a USB printer that can be attached and shared over the network via TeraStation's built-in Print Server. Designed to DLNA guidelines, the TeraStation Home Server is compatible with DLNA supported devices, including Buffalo's LinkTheater Mini Network Media Player for direct streaming of multimedia files to your TV. Compatibility with Buffalo's LinkTheater Wireless High Definition Network Media Player allows wireless streaming of all your music, videos, images in high definition. With its sleek, aesthetic design and ultra-silent operation, the TeraStation will get envious looks whether it is located in a busy office environment or on the entertainment system in your living room without adding any distracting fan noise or taking up much space.Product summary
The good: The Buffalo TeraStation Home Server is a DLNA-compliant media server with a huge capacity, a gigabit Ethernet connection, USB ports and a print server for network printing, and RAID 5 capability--all for an impressively small price tag.
The bad: Buffalo uses spanning and mirroring instead of RAID 0 and 1, and its write performance is a tad slow, due to RAID 5 configuration.
The bottom line: If you want a lot of NAS for not much cash, Buffalo's TeraStation Home Server NAS is a smash.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 05/05/2006
The silver-hued TeraStation Home Server NAS is about the size of, and distinctly resembles, a subwoofer from a trendy PC sound system: the front status lights encircle what could easily be mistaken for a subwoofer port. Appearances aside, the design is efficient: on the front are two USB 2.0 ports and a power switch, and on the back reside two more USB ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, a serial port for UPS monitoring, an AC cable connector, a fan, and the main power switch. (Note: Don't turn off the TeraStation using the power switch on the back--that will reboot the drive. Instead, hold the front button for the required three seconds. Otherwise, you're looking at six hours of the aforementioned status lights blinking incessantly while the unit checks the RAID array during reboot.) The USB ports can be used to connect additional hard drives or printers, as the TeraStation Home Server has a built-in print server for printing over the network.
Buffalo's TeraNavigator client utility will find the unit and let you access the HTML setup utility, since the unit doesn't default to grabbing a URL from your router using DHCP. To our mild annoyance, TeraNavigator works only with Internet Explorer. The HTML-configuration application on the TeraStation Home Server isn't the prettiest we've seen, but it's intuitive and offers all the options you need, from checking the status of the disks and arrays to how the Home Server will behave as a DLNA-compliant media server. (If you have a compatible media player such as the LinkTheater Mini, you can use the TeraStation Home Server to push video, photos, or music to your home entertainment system.) Memeo's AutoBackup, a real-time, continuous file-level backup utility, is also bundled with the drive. AutoBackup watches the folders on your PC and copies revised and newly created files to a safe location, likely on your new TeraStation Home Server drive. After upgrading to the latest version of the Memeo AutoBackup online, our backups to the TeraStation proceeded smoothly, but only after a reboot during which Windows decided to enlarge the size of its page file. (Without a large page file, the drive can suck up CPU cycles and memory like a hog at a trough. Before updating the program, AutoBackup almost brought our system to standstill while backing up, with nearly 60 percent CPU usage and taking a whopping 60MB of memory.)
If we have any complaint about the TeraStation Home Server, it's a decidedly minor one: the unit's lack of RAID implementations. The default mode of the drive is RAID 5, which is safe, but your storage capacity is reduced to 750GB after earmarking 250GB for parity (actually, after we formatted our drive, we were left with 697GB of free space). If you'd rather have all 1TB at your beck and call, you have to use spanning, since there's no RAID 0 mode. (RAID 0 mode wouldn't provide any performance benefit, even using a Gigabit Ethernet connection, but it could speed up the process of backing up the unit locally to hard drives connected via the USB ports.) We'd also rather see a RAID 0 + 1 mode for the mirroring instead of the two spanned RAID 1 pairs that the TeraStation Home Server uses. The LaCie Biggest F800 drive offers more RAID flexibility, but it's more expensive and isn't a NAS unit.
We tested the 1TB version of the TeraStation Home Server, and its write performance was a bit slower than the competition's (not unexpected with RAID 5 parity), but it excelled at serving up data from its platters to the network. It blew Western Digital's NetCenter drives out of the water, shaving the better part of 10 minutes off of those units' times.
(Shorter bars indicate faster performance)
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5GB read test | |
5GB write test |
Buffalo provides only a one-year warranty on the TeraStation Home Server, but that's not unexpected at this price point. On the plus side, Buffalo offers 24/7 toll-free phone support, and you can also contact tech support via a Web form from Buffalo's site. The Web site also offers a knowledge base, FAQs, and downloadable manuals, drivers, and firmware.
Buffalo's TeraStation Home Server NAS drive is a solid network-attached storage drive at a low price. The fact that it provides Gigabit Ethernet and a DLNA-compliant media server only sweetens the deal.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15out of 15 user reviews
Customer Service?? What's that??
Pros: Small size
Cons: Had since Dec. '08, and not been able to back up ANYTHING. Right out of the box it had a hard drive failure. It took them over 1 month to ship replacement drive. It was refurbished. It failed too, Customer service is TERRIBLE and RUDE. STAY AWAY!
out of 15 user reviews
Lousy reliability and customer svc, no repair option
Pros: Good while it worked.
Cons: No out-of-warranty option. Poor customer service. Poor reliability. Could not delete some of the folders created. Inconsistent success with updating firmware.
out of 15 user reviews
Terrible product...terrible support
Pros: price per GB
Cons: slow transfer; worked for awhile, then crashed
Now looking for another brand.
out of 15 user reviews
Don't By Any BuffaloTech Product
Pros: Worked OK, When It Was Working
Cons: BuffaloTech Does Not Care About It's Customers
out of 15 user reviews
The company is staffed by a bunch of clowns
Pros: Good price point
Cons: Support is lousy
When you ask for phone calls back from support or customer service. Dont expect to receive it. This is definitely the last time I will do business with Buffalo Technologies.
out of 15 user reviews
Don't buy Buffalo
Pros: Quick and easy to use,
Cons: Poor reliability, worse support
So, you better buy two, and back up to the other one, or better yet, don't get a Buffalo at all.
out of 15 user reviews
Dont buy anything from this company!!!!
Pros: there is a lot of storage when you can use it
Cons: No Support, No Deveopment BAD Performance!!!
out of 15 user reviews
Good cheap NAS solution!
Pros: Gigabit ethernet works better than MACBOOK
Cons: RAID5 limits write speed a little, but not too bad
out of 15 user reviews
Good Solid Inexpensive Network Attached Storage
Pros: Easy setup, Good HTML Interface, Buffalo Phone Support, Serves media nicely, Sheer Capacity!!
Cons: Not Active Directory capable (domain), Noisy; Slow indexing of media files; Poor written instructions; Lousy web site for BIOS upgrades (which you will need)
Buffalo phone support was used several times, and they nailed the issues quickly, and gave me pathways and instructions to fix the issues (automated backup, and FTP service glitches). The attached USB drives have NO security functionality if you don't use their XFS file formatting on them - which then locks you out if you ever need to directly connect back up to your PC with that USB drive. That is one significant flaw in their "system". The associated literature is incomplete – if you are looking for a stellar manual to help you, think again. You’ll need that phone support there. Otherwise, this thing rocks, and it has been very reliable. For the price, you can not build your own Raid5 system! If you are noise adverse, you should look elsewhere. This thing is not silent, but tis not overwhelming either. Good reliability so far. Stay tuned.
Buffalo ended up bailing on support, and WARRANTY. Presented an RMA to return it, but was rejected when they wouln't honor the proof of purchase from a non-ebay store receipt. Won't EVER BUY ANOTHER BUFFALO PRODUCT AGAIN. BUYER BEWARE. Ten years from now this outfit won't exist.
out of 15 user reviews
Nice features, lots of problems
Pros: Big storage for the price; RAID redundancy
Cons: Unreliable, many problems, very poor support
out of 15 user reviews
Useless piece of junk!
Pros: Lots of space, RAID ability
Cons: Not Mac OSX capadible, weak interface
out of 15 user reviews
Buyer beware!
Pros: May work fine for awhile...
Cons: No service available after warranty, and awful support.
out of 15 user reviews
Piece of junk
Pros: RAID 5 protection
Cons: poor quality, poor customer service, and very poor replacement policies
out of 15 user reviews
Limitation on USB devices
Pros: Price, capacity, concept
Cons: USB implementation
This may not be an issue for others, but I discovered that the only way to write to external USB devices is to have them formatted as XFS.
I have a number of external USB drives that are in practice semi-portable for me. Apart from the issues of reformatting a mostly-full drive (I bought the TS for additional, not replacement storage), it means if I do reformat them that I cannot port them to another location and plug them in directly to my laptop, for example.
out of 15 user reviews
A fantastic unit
Pros: Fast, easy setup
Cons: built-in vpn support would be nice
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