Touch the Future Now at Staples
Entered CNET Catalog: 02/26/2005
SKU: 0747464109503
Manufacturer: Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc.
Manufacturer description
Buffalo's TeraStation 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 can be attached and shared over the network via TeraStation's built-in Print Server. Compatibility with Buffalo's LinkTheater Wireless HD Media Player allows wired or wireless streaming of your multimedia files to your television in almost any audio, video or graphic format. 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.User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
User Rating: 
1/10
Bunch of useless junk
Pros: Two of three were free...?
Cons: I have now interacted with three Buffalo NAS products. Two units inherited in different jobs and one at home that I bought in a brain-daze.
They have all failed. The interfaces are unhelpful. Problem recovery hard. Support sites unavigable.
All in all, there are so many better options that I'm never buying another Buffalo product. These units would have been great in a 1990's world, but today? Go elsewhere - Data Robotics, Iomega, almost anything.
User Rating: 1/10
Does not hold up over the long run.
Pros: Compact, Easy interface, lots of disk space.
Cons: Purchased 6 over 3yrs. All have had a problem. Failed drives, USB ports. Tech support over email is sloppy. This month I called RMA desk to find out why an RMA was not issued. I was told the unit was past 1yr even tho the tech said it was covered.
User Rating: 
2/10
Very fragile, lousy customer service
Pros: Cheap but worthless
Cons: We had 4 Buffalo NAS devices (Pro I and Pro II) with Raid 5 in our office in the past 12 months; each has broken for various reasons -- hard drives, broken case -- and customer support is useless.
When the customer service boss wrote me that they would not honor the 1 year warranty, I wrote him:
Yes, we did receive a defective re-manufactured unit that we had to pay you to mail us, put on our credit card, then pay our IT company to configure before it crashed. Then on your tech's advice, we re-configured the original unit with new hard drives from the re-manufactured unit until it, too, crashed.
Only after complaining higher up the Buffalo Tech ladder, were we sent the new Pro2 unit. Obviously someone with a deeper commitment to customer service realized that our request for a NEW unit made sense, as that's what should have been sent to us after the FIRST replacement unit crashed.
In any case, when our IT guys refused to configure the Pro2 until we had a full year warranty, someone in your Customer Service department (I believe a woman) assured me over the phone, before shipping the Pro2, that it would have a one-year warranty.
And that's the truth. Tell me if you want to buy any products from this company.
User Rating: 1/10
Buffalo TeraStation NAS (re: 2)
Pros: Nope; however, it can be used for recycling.
Cons: Looks like it could have been a great product! Looks are only skin deep!
They claim, buy protection; buy our products. However, pray tell, if they will not service, under any condition, a failed Terrastation, what is there product worth? What will happen to you if you buy one of their Terrastation use it for a few years, warranty is over, and need to replace the board like I did?
There police, and I called twice because I could not believe what I was hearing, was explained to me like this: 'The unit is out of warranty; there is no help from us under any circumstances. We will not send you a new board even if you first send us your old board and pay us for the new one; we will not let you pay us to fix your old unit; we will not give you any help.
Nearly 3 TB of data in RAID 5, gone!
This is a company from Hell; really! "Save yourself some grief and DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!!! "
User Rating: 
7/10
After Four Years: Still working full time and reliable
Pros: - user interface
- easy config of users, groups and their own access profiles
- Stability : uptime of 300 days ... cannot imagine this with windows server
Cons: - Backup facility is rather instable: verification is needed
- unclear maintenance profile concerning firmwares
If lasts for 4 years now and I only once had a small problem.
If a new one should be bought, I will first consider a newer version becaus ... mine is out of stock ;o)
User Rating: 2/10
Disposable Storage
Pros: when it works, it works well
Cons: bad support, can't obtain parts after warranty
User Rating: 2/10
Don't rely on it!
Pros: It was the cheapest with raid 10
Cons: dies w/ no recourse
User Rating: 1/10
only store stuff you expect to lose here
Pros: the product looks good on paper
Cons: The product is flakey and the company support is non existant
The product looks great. 2 tb of redundant storage that seems secure.
But then reality sets in.
-the product loads it's kernal in a very flakey way. What good is a redundant array of hard drives with no controller?
- customer support is nill. Wait time on hold was over 30 minutes then somebody came on and asked me to leave a call back number. This happened twice with no callback.
- It was like pulling teeth to get an RMA number. When I did, it took over a month to get a replacement.
- getting e-mail support was equally disappointing. I went back and forth 5 times before I could get somebody to call me.
Bottom line is:
flakey product + poor service = horrible product.
I would not buy anything from buffalo ever again.
User Rating: 2/10
Shop for a different brand
Pros: ok when it works
Cons: poor customer support
User Rating: 1/10
NOT for Business users
Pros: It works when it's not broken
Cons: Absolutely no support after warranty
User Rating: 1/10
bad hardware, worse customer service
Pros: makes a good paper weight
Cons: flakey hardware, bad customer service
BTW, the USB only works as a way to extend the storage, you can't copy data from a USB drive onto the Terrastation.
Also, the serial port does not act as a console interface, so I have no way of connecting to the system to see what's going on. I found a hack for that, but it involves re-soldering the board, which voids the warranty.
There are way too many other ways to store your data - save yourself some grief and DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!!!
User Rating: 
3/10
Western Digital drives?
Pros: 1TB storgage
Cons: western digital drives
User Rating: 1/10
Dead after one year. No support
Pros: Works ok for a year.
Cons: Bad design, very short life, NO support
User Rating: 
8/10
Performs very well
Pros: Great Storage, Great Backup, Fast, + Power Management
Cons: None that I am aware of thus far
User Rating: 8/10
Great for the Price
Pros: Low entry NAS solutions
Cons: None really
I personaly use Windows Media Center and have all my personal movie library online and photos accessing this unit on the LAN. I get about 7-8 MB/Sec transfer speeds. That is plenty when watching a movie over the lan.
User Rating: 
5/10
NOT as secure as you might think!
Pros: Great price, Xlnt tech support
Cons: If driver board fails, you're screwed
User Rating: 
4/10
Don't Trust Customer Support
Pros: simple setup and interface
Cons: it failed, lack of customization of admin account
I'll chalk the hardware failure up to infant mortality but boy i got hosed by their support staff when trying to fix something that should be routine for them.
User Rating: 1/10
WARNING WARNING WARNING
Pros: good concept
Cons: Completely unreliable!
User Rating: 2/10
poor throughput and service
Pros: price size
Cons: slooooooooowwww and poor service
I am extremely sorry for my original purchase of the Buffalo product and will make sure to move to a different NAS system, such as Infrant and I will also not recommend your product due to the poor support that you provide. Read the review at http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/03/03/infrant_readynas_nv/
for a comparison between the INfrant and buffalo systems
User Rating: 1/10
It Sucks, it is not compatible with widows 2000 or 2003 server and active directory
Pros: has raid 5
Cons: worthless in a active directorie enviroment
Some times when you map drive you get not available message other times ok but if you try to connect later you get the unavailable error.
This was a total waste of money for us (we bought 2) for any small business that uses windows server stay away
User Rating: 
9/10
Read the manual before you buy.
Pros: Does everything the manual claims it will do.
Cons: Not designed for IT Services or "production" environments.
This device does EVERYTHING the manual claims - I have owned one for over one year and have put it through the ringer and it has never failed to meet my needs. On a 100MB/s LAN it is slow -HOWEVER- on a 1 GB/s LAN it rocks - even without Jumbo Frames on.
I considered gutting the box and placing the controller & drives into another case with removable drive bays for easy replacement in the event of a failure. I then looked at the TeraStation PRO which has removable SATA drives and an actual status display in addition to lights and bought it. The beauty of this is I now have one TeraStation backed up to another over a GB LAN with ZERO loading on my computers.
If you can't tell - I love this device and its new PRO variant even more. Just RTFM before you buy it to make sure it meets your requirements.
User Rating: 1/10
would never recommend that anyone purchase this product
Pros: Not Available
Cons: Not Available
I have been calling support for over 2 weeks now. I wait on hold for 2 hours straight before finally hanging up.
There are numerous issues that I face with this unit.
I will list a few here.
Speed:
It is impossible to get above 8MBps (MegaBytes) 64mbps (Mega bits). I have spoken to support and the tech tried to give me a ridicules excuse saying that I need to get a gigabit Ethernet cable. FYI? there is no such thing. If you use a standard 4 pair cat5e then you are able to transmit gigabit speeds.
The gigabit connection is very misleading and I would rate it as a scam or false advertising.
So I finally spoke with support again and was told that 8MB is the max write speed.
There are quite a few other annoyances that you have to deal with. Here are a few?.
1. Many changes to the configuration will kill any transfer in progress.
2. There is no internal file manager
3. When connecting a usb drive you have to reboot the terastation to connect a new usb drive to the same port.
4. ftp does not support site to site transfers
5. You cannot connect your PC to the terastation via USB. USB is only for additional drives or printers
6. Will not show multiple partitions on a attached usb disk. Will only display first partition found.
7. no disk quota
User Rating: 1/10
bad performance, abysmal customer service
Pros: nice idea if it worked
Cons: bad performance, abysmal customer service
User Rating: 1/10
Miserable Junk
Pros: Noe that I found
Cons: Does Not Work and Terrible Tech. Support
Works the worst in a RAID 1 configuration.
Tech. Support has promised to call back. They never do. They are not familiar with their product. It took them 20 minutes to figure out that in order to reset the device all you have to do is push the reset button on the back. Tech Support wait times have been 20 min. 43 min. and never.
When I quizzed TS about the reliability of the product they said that, ?they have a 3% DOA rate and 1% after the unit has been returned for replacement.?
Do not waste your money. I went instead with a LACIE d2 Big Disk Extreme which works just like you would expect it to.
They also do not update the music you have to listen to when on hold.
Clearly this organization does not have a clue about Kuality, nor can they spell it.
User Rating: 9/10
Worked out great, eventually
Pros: Easy Setup, ability to access files anywhere, RAID functions
Cons: Initialy slow speeds
Well, long story short, I upgraded to a Gigabit switch...WOW. I can copy movies in under 3 minutes, not bad for an alomst 2gig file. As a test, I also hooked it via a crossover cable to my PC....just as fast.
Now that my speed problems are fixed, I couldn't be happier. Really is an awsome box if you can get the speed issues resolved.
User Rating: 5/10
Not quite right
Pros: Nice looks, quiet, good price
Cons: Poor documentation, irratic performance
User Rating: 2/10
Doesn't perform as advertised
Pros: Quick, easy set-up
Cons: Very slow, doesn't work with most back-up software, poor customer service
User Rating: 9/10
Great Idea, but needs a little work
Pros: Huge Capacity, Easy Setup
Cons: Performace internally is a little slow
User Rating: 8/10
Perfect for the Job
Pros: Well designed interface and easy setup
Cons: Slower than it should be.
I use my unit to store photos and streaming media, a task for which it is well suited. Granted, the transfer speed could be better but the slow performance does not present a bottleneck for my streaming needs.
After struggling through many technical glitches in other equipment I have purchased in a massive technology overhaul of our household the TeraStation was welcome relief in its problem free operation.
User Rating: 
10/10
Reliable, RAID 5, FTP server, user accounts and more
Pros: RAID 5 with 4 250GB drives, User accounts, groups, works great
Cons: So far, none - I don't want my network congested with 100 mbit transfers
Also, the unit shuts down the drives after 30 minutes of inactivity, and it has a scheduler to turn off at night and wake up in the morning (if desired). There are several backup modes that work with other Buffalo units (I only have one now, but am considering a second one to allow backups between NAS units. And it supports full or incremental backups that can be scheduled. Also, it gets time from one of the NNTP servers, and can e-mail multiple accounts if problems occur, to report the need for drive replacement should that be required.
Shop around, you won't find NAS with this capacity and features for any less, and probably pay more.
I would recommend this to anyone with concerns about secure storage, backup, and reliability. I give this a 10 out of 10 for price/features/reliability and ease of use.
Forgot to mention: 4 USB ports are provided for external USB drives that can be used for backup, but I haven't tried them yet. It also has a built-in Print Server (haven't tried that either) and a broadcast mode called "PCast" to serve up media to an appropriate device (which I don't have).
Buffalo provides a CD program that accesses the basic features of the NAS device, but the advanced access is better, simply use HTTP to the IP address of the device, logi n (user,pw) and configure users, groups, shared folders, USB ports, print server, PCast, NTP server, etc.
If there is a more capable device at this price, post information about it.
User Rating: 7/10
Good, but some gotchas
Pros: Big Storage, pretty easy setup, small footprint, reasonable price.
Cons: Hardware not fast enough for full gigabit, linux based limitations.
We also expected access time and transfer time to be a lot faster than it is. The underlying disk hardware/software appears to be the speed-limiting factor, not the networking.
But overall satisfied anyway and will probably buy more of these.
User Rating: 8/10
limited eval up to this point is thumbs up
Pros: easy setup!!!! quiet, looks good, small
Cons: got to disassemble to replace drives, not NTFS/FAT file system
Easy setup as RAID 5 on a small win xp home network (10/100). browser based, like standard linksys routers,etc.
I put about 350 GB on it. For reference, Took me about 1-2 sec. per 5MB file to transfer. Maybe it's not fast, I don't know and don't care.
Where else can you get a reasonably priced 1 TB home NAS with the features The TS has? I just haven't seen any viable alternatives.
I will write another review after I get it set up as a secure FTP server. I will need a geek friend to help me do that.
-Houston
Well, got it set up as an FTP in quick order with minimal help needed from a geek.
easy to setup privileges, access issues, etc.
Has worked very well over the last week.
_houston
User Rating: 3/10
Very poor performance for Gigabit networks.
Pros: Good price for a lot of storage.
Cons: Not capable of Gigabit speeds. Not Macintosh friendly.
But my biggest complaint is the speed. Buffalo advertises that the TeraStation uses Gigabit transmission rates but what they do not tell you is that the software RAID cannot handle Gigabit speeds. After several calls to tech support, a reluctant tech rep finally admitted that the software RAID was only capable of 5 Megabytes per second inbound and 11 Megabytes per second outbound. Customers on a base 100 network may never know the difference but if you are using Gigabit in your home or office the TeraStation will be obviously slow.
The final verdict: The TeraStation works well for PC networks running at 100 BASE-TX / 10 BASE-T only. Mac only networks and any network running at 1000 BASE-T show the TeraStation's compatibility and speed limitations.
User Rating: 5/10
great concept; weak execution
Pros: this size NAS much needed
Cons: drives hard to change, not hot-swappable
User Rating: 
6/10
Great idea, poor performance
Pros: Easy to configure and use, very convenient
Cons: File transfer is SLOW
The box was very easy to set up and works great, but the performance is pretty slow. On my 100mb LAN, I only show about 33% utilization when transferring files, this is compared to the upwards of 80% utilization I get when transferring files between two normal machines (all XP pro) on my LAN.
I spoke with the excellent tech. support (24/7), and they recommended that I upgrade to the latest firmware (1.5 at the time). I did this, but no performance improvements seem to have been made. They told me they were aware of the performance issues and were working on a new firmware revision to address it, but gave no ETA.
One last comment, the firmware upgrade information does not appear anywhere on their website, you have to call tech. support to get it. I suppose this means I'll have to constantly check back to see when the next one becomes available.
This would be a great product if its performance was better!
User Rating: 5/10
Better for home than business
Pros: Cheap, pretty spinning lights
Cons: Slow, poor security, no AD support
However, several things disappointed me. First they are slow to do backups to, a NTBackup job of about 95 gigs that went up to the Quantam in two hours took five to the TeraStation. Everything is Gigabit, jumbo frames, the lot.
Second is the security implenation. Having previewed the documentation from the web site I had found the one line that said AD was not supported. Fine, I will just create Admin accounts on the Terastations with the same passwords for pass through. Uh-uh, all our admin passwords are complex (uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols) the TeraStation only accepts dash and underscore other than letters and numbers.
Maybe I expected too much for the price, I could live with the slow speeds but the security problems severely limit their acceptable use for me on our network.
Having said all the above, I would love to have one of these at home to store pc backups, movies, pictures, music etc.
User Rating: 8/10
Loads of storage in one handy box
Pros: Quiet, small, great looking
Cons: Hard drives not easy to swap, no backup from external USB to terastation, no backup from one disk to another
Speed wise I was disappointed to start with until I realised jumbo frames is not the default on the terastation. Now I get about 19Mb/s from and 16Mb/s to it (average) using a crossover cable.
Tried it with raid but I think its was probably creating the array as it was very slow.
I wish you could backup the contents of a external usb drive to the terastation (you can backup to the usb from the terastation), rather than having to copy it across the network.
According to Buffalo its 'easy' to change the hard drives - dream on.
I contacted Buffalo to check what speeds I should get this is their reply:
Environment: (Values change greatly with changes in environment)
PC
ell Optiplex270(Pentium4 2.4GHz, RAM 512MB)TeraStation(RAID5)
Test File 2269102 bytes(binary)
get : to PC from TeraStation
put : to TeraStation from PC
1. 100Mb
get 12134.24 Kbytes/sec
put 11177.84 Kbytes/sec
2. 1Gb(Jumbo Frame:7418 bytes)
get 16207.87 Kbytes/sec
put 13269.60 Kbytes/sec
3. Connected USB Disk Drive(HD-HB160U2) *1Gb get 16207.87 Kbytes/sec put 11177.84 Kbytes/sec
