OK boys and girls - time to put pen to paper (figuratively of course!) and give you an overview of this monster of a storage device.

For the readers of my past reviews, I'll keep the same tack and write based on my personal experience. For the new readers, welcome and I hope that the review will give you some insight to the product and be useful to you.

So what do I have - officially labeled the HD-HTGL/R5 Series - I'm reviewing the HD-H1.0TGL/R5. Or on a more friendly term - the Buffalo 1GB TeraStation TeraByte Network Attached Storage.

YES - the age of the TERABYTE (TB) has arrived officially to the consumer market. At the cost of SGD1750.00 (approx. USD1000.00), it is within the reach of most consumers.

Let me justify why I purchased this particular model:
1. I needed a network storage system that is RAID 5 ready. This is based on my many experiences with failing/failed hard drives. For those who have no idea what this means - it is basically an enterprise-level type of data redundancy system.

2. Lots of space. I have a collection of about 60GB of music, quite a bit of digitized home videos, a current crop of digital photos amounting to about 6GB with lots more to come, and a lot of other files. This Terastation comes with 4x250GB hard drives. Effectively you can have up to 1TB of data. However, I am using it as a RAID 5 system so I only have up to 750GB available for use. But hey, RAID 5 ensures that I can have 1 drive failure and my info is still relatively retrieveable. So with 750GB - I hope to be able to manage my digital life effectively.

3. A multi-platform system that allows access for both Windows and Mac OSes. My wife uses windows while I have a Mac laptop. This means I need to have a system that allows access from both.

4. Network capability. This is important as it means I don't need to use USB or Firewire. Not only is it a NAS (network attached storage) it does it with 1gigabit capability. So your files are "theoretically" available faster when you use a true gigabit network.

5. Easy to manage. (see below for more details)

6. Cost effective. Hmmm - many people have put in the comment that this is a relatively expensive proposition for USD1000. But let me give you a breakdown based on my research.
4x250GB hard drives - approximate cost (based on pricewatch.com) 4xUSD95 = USD380.
RAID 5 capable card (adaptec - IDE RAID 5 - again on pricewatch.com) approx. USD95
Operating System. This one is interesting as I've read people who claim to use MS Windows Server 2k3. There are at least 2 options here - for the well to do we can use WinSvr2k3 & for the techie we can use any Linux distro.
--OS1: Windows Server 2003 Std Edition USD965.00 (CompUSA)
--OS2: Windows Server 2003 SBS USD600.00 (CompUSA)
--OS3: Linux RedHat Enterprise ES Basic USD349.00 (Redhat.com)
(These are just examples of market prices - your actual costs may be different based on where you are and what you feel comfortable with)
Gigabit NIC Some motherboards already offer this but it is rare. So we might as well include it as part of the requirement at USD10.00.
Casing Looking at the dimensions previously stated you will be hard pressed to find a similar box ... Otherwise we will just look at a box which can hold 4 drives - I'll put a price of about USD250.00. This includes the whole package - CPU (older), memory (some), a case, &etc.

So what's the damage? USD380.00 + USD95.00 + USD965.00 + USD10 + USD250.00 = USD1700 for the worst case scenario.
You have yet to include - for our mates in the USA - sales tax, shipping cost, & other consideration.
So it was quite easy for me to justify the cost of the system. The biggest plus was of course the ease of use and set up (more details below). As the Mastercard ads describe it - PRICELESS!!!

What's in the box?
1. The Terastation - it's so small!!!
2. Power cord
3. Flat cord CAT5 cable - Gigabit capable
4. Installation CD
5. Quick Setup guide

Personal Experience
So I put down my $$$ and carried the box home. I took it out of the box and within 10 mins the system was ready for use. If you remember the Apple ads competing a kid setting up the iMac against an adult setting up a PC - you get the picture.
The 10 mins includes me setting it up for RAID 5 - though I was informed by the system that it would take about 4 to 5 hours to complete its diagnosis of a new system. During which time I'm not to shut down the system. So make sure you set up the system in its final location before turning it on.
Further, the 10 mins also set up the IP address (Static) and identifies the workgroup/domain name of your Windows domain.
I've yet to set up the security features - I'm waiting for the diagnosis to finish. I will add more once that is done.
So far it has been a pleasant experience using the system. It is easy and it meets my needs.

Personal Experience - Part Two (added 20 hours after I purchased this - 21/07)
It has been less than a day since I brought this baby home and there are some more detais to add.
FIRST I am downgrading my rating from 5 to 4. The primary reason being that it is not UNICODE capable. Why is this important for me?? I file using an international set of characters - chinese (both traditional and simplified), German (including umlauts), French (including Accents) & etc ...
Thus the limitation imposed by not having Unicode is - in this day and age of globalization - is INEXCUSABLE!!!
SECOND there is a limitation on the length of the filename.
THIRD - filenames cannot have special characters. Eg. "Squiggly" - US Keyboard top-left symbol "~", is not recognized.

What does the above three points highlight to you? Well, you need to be very careful with your filenames.
In my case - I cannot properly back up my music, photos, and documents to the drive. Potentially I have to zip/compress my files before I can back up my files. Not very efficient.

On the flip side - I can verify that the system is quite user friendly. Once the system is set up, we can access the admin webpage from any browser.
There is ample information supplied and quite intuitive to use and set up.
The default settings are OK, but some settings can be changed if necessary. Example being the IP address, whether it is part of a domain or workgroup - though it does not tie in with the AD structure for security purposes.

File sharing is quite simple - with the ability to set up simple access control by users or groups. FTP is turned off by default - a good idea.

There is one thing that I am still not sure of and that is a function titled PCast. It seems like a media streaming utility using port 8080. But how do you access the files? I'll have to do more experimentation. OR (this is my wild guess) it could be a function tied into the media player/server offered by Buffalo ...

There is also a 34-page user guide in PDF. It is quite comprehensive - including step by step instruction on how to change a hard drive. This definitely confirms that it is a hassle to change the drives.
It would be interesting to see how long it takes to rebuild the RAID5 after installation of the new HD. And it would be interesting to see - when a drive does fail - how easy it is to find a replacement drive.

So far so good - I just need to get chinese filenames/characters recognized by the system ... SIGH!!! I go through this all the time!!!

Cheers!
end of perex-part2

Personal Experience Part Three (added July 23, 2005)
So it has been a few days since I set up the system, what is my overall impression till now? I like it! I will still keep all the 5 ratings but give it 4 stars.

It is very quiet during operation. Compared to my ShuttleX PC, the fan noise is hardly audible. This makes it a good option for the living room.

I have also posted some questions to Buffalo (the manufacturer - www.buffalotech.com). The response is reasonably quick - considering the time difference between Singapore and the US.
Further, they have confirmed that the system has the following limitation:
1. 32 character filename - which i have confirmed through my own testing

2. Single language set - the Terastation allows you to choose which language to use for the system. But it does not allow for multiple languages to be used at the same time.
Example - for the people who don't know, Chinese has two forms of character input. Traditional and Simplified. When I choose Simplified, my Tradtional named files will show unrecognizable words. And vice versa. So this is not very practical.
A bit more information on Traditional vs Simplified. Traditional characters are usually used by Hong Kong and Taiwan. Simplified was developed due to the difficulty of using Traditional by the Chinese Govt in the 50s & 60s. This script is used by Singapore, China and others.
But in business we come across people who use both, so the system must allow for cross cultural files. This is probably the same as saying the Germans cannot use the French accented characters in the file names. Quite absurd isn't it?
So the solution would be to make the system totally Unicode capable and thus eliminating the issue.

There are no other issues to bring up specifically. The system seems to be taking care of itself - with the lights blinking quite happily when there is activity.
In fact - talking about lights - there are quite a number of them on the front panel. Quite user friendly they are - with each HD having 2 lights denoting Status and Access.
There is also the LAN light which changes color based on the speed of your connection. Blue represents Gigabit connection, Green is 100Mbps, and Amber is 10Mbps.

So that's it for now. I hope they can resolve the UNICODE issue. Once it has unicode recognition with a 128 character filename system, this product will be a 5+ star system in my humble opinion.

Thanks!
end of perex-part3

Pros:
1. Simple to set up - just follow the prompts of the install CD and bingo.
2. Options for usage - from JBOD through RAID 5.
3. Multi-platform accessible.
4. Network Accessible at Gigabit speed, though your actual throughput will be limited by the speed of the IDE drives.
5. Small footprint - 9.5" deep x 8.7" (9" with rubber feet) high x 6.6" wide
6. Web management
7. Really quiet

Cons:
1. Initial set up can only be done through Windows
2. ATA drives - not SCSI nor SATA. reducing read/write speed
3. Hard to change drives should it be necessary - tho' I have yet to actually open the box up to see how hard it is to do. The fact that the drives are not hot swappable makes it "difficult".
4. Not UNICODE ready - unable to identify international characters.
5. Filename limitation


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1000
Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac