Hard Drive & Storage – News & Reviews

Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS

Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS offers powerful storage and multimedia solutions for small/medium sized businesses and consumer markets. It features advanced fault tolerant data solutions, robust file security and Gigabit Ethernet networking. 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, and images in high definition.

Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS has a sleek and aesthetic design and resembles a subwoofer from a trendy PC sound system. 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. It has a 90mm fan for hard drive cooling. The silver-hued Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS has ultra-silent operation, beneath the silver outer cover; an additional layer of steel casing provides more durability and sound deadening. 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.

The TeraStation Home Server ships with four Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm 250GB EIDE hard drives. 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. Memeo’s AutoBackup, a real-time, continuous file-level backup utility, is also bundled with the drive.

Features:

• Supports Windows XP/2000/Me/NT4.0/98SE and Linux.
• Compatibility: PC 
• Storage Controller: RAID
• Raid level: default RAID 5 mode is just under 700GB, JBOD (4 x 250GB), Spanning (1TB), RAID 1 mirroring (2 x 250GB).
• User and group level access permissions
• Domain support: Import users and groups from an NT4 domain
• Protocol support: TCP/IP, SMB, and FTP
• UPS compatibility: Automatic or manual shutdown during a power outage
• Built-in DLNA server functionality
• Four USB 2.0 ports for printers and external hard drives
• Data Link Protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet
• Networking feature: Network adapter
• Print server for network printing.
• Total Storage Capacity: 1 TB.

Drawbacks:

• Buffalo uses spanning and mirroring instead of RAID 0 and 1
• Its write performance is very slow, due to RAID 5 configuration.

Comments:

Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS is easy to setup and works well over a network transferring large files to several computers, including one over wireless. It can turn itself on and off and run independent backups of its content according to schedule. Its main attraction is the ultra-silent operation.  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 makes the deal. The negative aspect of Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS is that if you had a power cut it wouldn’t start up again without manual intervention. If the slow writing speed does not matter much Buffalo TeraStation Home Server NAS is a smart choice.