Buffalo TeraStation review

[johnbeardy]

Just a pointer to a Canadian photographer's review of using a Buffalo TeraStation Pro. A bit long winded but he concludes:

"Now that I have a TeraStation, I cannot say that I would purchase another one again. I do acknowledge that it’s nicely made and it's a convenient single box storage solution with nary a need to be technically inclined to use it as a RAID 5, however, if I wanted another NAS unit, I would look for one with much better performance specifications such as those from Infrant.

In the course of computer upgrading and moving parts to and fro, I took out one of my 74 GB Raptor drives (10,000 rpm speed) from my old PC and installed it in one of my external cases. The performance from standard USB 2.0 blows the TeraStation out of the water.

However, because the TeraStation is now part of my storage system (more out of default than desire after discovering how slow it is), it is changing the way I’m backing up my files. Most of my old external drives with 300 GB per, will now be stored off site for added security and rotated as needed with the TeraStation being my primary backup system. It just means having to do overnight file transfers to work around the rather brutal performance. And as things stand, 700 GB doesn’t go too far when you’re archiving all of your digital files for the past five years. I may be in search of another solution sooner than expected."

John

[peterkrogh]

John,
What's your feeling about the self-contained structure of these devices?  One of the things that makes me nervous about this box is that it has its own OS, and I wonder what tools are available to use if there is a problem with its filesystem, or if it has a failure.

BTW, if I was buying a drive case right now, I'd be looking at this:

http://cooldrives.com/sata-to-firewire-four-drive-case.html

It takes SATA drives, and has FW800 connection capability (as well as FW400 and USB2.)

Peter

[johnbeardy]

Peter

I'm exactly where you are when you say "one of the things that makes me nervous about this box is that it has its own OS", and I think you make similar comments in the book. That frightens me too, even if in extremis you might take out the drives and access them in an old computer. I'm happy to let others be early adopters.

Rather than adding to my artistically lined-up row of external drives, I've recently been trying to see if I can find UK suppliers of drive boxes like those, even tracking down the manufacturers of cases available in the US. So far I've drawn a blank, with plenty of servers and pc cases, but nothing as basic as these enclosures. I need to meet someone who has had experience of putting such things together - maybe a lonely hearts ad in a computing mag?

John

[peterkrogh]

John,
These things really are simple.  It's a little surprising that they are as hard to find as they are.  It looks to me that places like Cooldrives, at least, are getting the supply chain in order, so that they can deliver with some reliability.

Is it impossible to get these shipped to the UK? 

As an aside, there is a potentially great development coming in this area from TrustedData.  Unfortunately it's probably six months from general availability.
Peter

[Dawnne Gee]

My only beef with the cooldrives unit is that my main system, now almost two years old, doesn't have a FW800 port -- at least I don't think it does. FW400, yes, and USB2 (which are fairly comparable), but to get the best performance out of the cooldrive unit, I'd also have to get a new system. While that's not entirely unlikely, part of me is more inclined to simply buy a separate system with multiple hard drives as an file server and keep it segmented from the rest of my network here and invisible to the external router for security.

I do very much like the fact that the cooldrives case is hot-swappable if you don't mirror or RAID-array it. I would personally probably get two sets, put in the biggest drives available and at least mirror them -- and that's what I'd recommend to anyone who lives "out in the boonies" where electricity isn't always as stable as you'd like it to be. I've gone through two UPS's in a little over two years thanks to infrequent brown-outs.

One other consideration: Where we live and work now, we don't have to worry overmuch about physical security, but having moved just a couple of years ago from SoCal, physical security still weighs prominently on my mind. These external hard-drive arrays sure are easy targets for quick grab-n-runs, and such would have the most damaging results. Rack-mounted servers are expensive to get going (the rack and the space it takes up sucks), but they're a LOT more trouble to abscond with....

[johnbeardy]

Peter

It's probably possible to import but I'd like to avoid the inevitable hassle. Then again, the nearest I've found, and just today, is Wiebetech and the usual rule applies - for anything you buy in the UK, take the US price and change the dollar sign to the pound.

John

[pjgibson]

John

Have you tried span.com

Paul

[johnbeardy]

No, Paul, I hadn't but that looks like the right sort of stuff. I'm away for a few days but that's moves the project forward a long way.

John

[David Anderson]

John,
You also might want to look at the Infrant Network Attached Storage range. This is available in the UK at the following link.

http://www.eaegis.net/browse_dept_items.asp/categ_id/66/parent_ids/34/Name/Infrant_ReadyNAS

I considered the Buffalo TeraStation about a year ago but was put off by reviews that highlighted some performance issues and the fact that it runs so hot that you can fry an egg on top of the case (not a promising sign for reliability). In contrast, I only found good reviews for the Infrant NAS kit. In the end, I decided that it was not yet a vital purchase - but I was tempted.

David

[David Arnold]

There's also a review of the Buffalo TeraStation, plus some other units, in the latest (Nov/Dec '06) issue of Digital Photo Pro, pages 137-145: "Safe Keeping, Part 1 - Dealing with the long-term storage challenges that every pro will face," by John Brandon.

David

[chappers]

I am in the same situation as John, although I may not have the same volume as he has. I am looking for a storage solution for digital files, but I can confirm that in the UK we don't seem to have an outlet such as Macgurus, more's the pity. Importing is a nightmare.

I've had a look at the span.com site and it does look  interesting.

I wonder has anyone tried using a Firewire 800 drive as a storage solution. The plan(!) would be to use these as the main storage location rather than the computers hard drive. My main concern is file transfere speed  USB-2 / Firewire400 is slow, but I wondered if the new Firewire 800 drives were significantly faster.

Any help and sugestions warmly welcolmed

Thanks

John C

[robertholland]

Realize this is an older thread but just joined. I've thought about one of these NAS or similar so I could have select files / current jobs accessable by me (or client) remotely. Anyone else doing that?

Thanks,

Robert
www.robertholland.com

[roberte]

Hi Robert,

If clients can access your network the they can also access a NAS. NAS can be connected to a router.

The appeal of NAS for me is in a mixed platform environment. Mac and Windows can be read/write to FAT32 but it has size limitations. Windows can read/write to NTFS drives but Mac OS X 10.4 can only read it. NTFS on a network lallows Mac and Windows to both read and write.

Then there is wireless networking for those small bandwidth jobs while sitting next to the pool :~).

-- Robert.