Small size, massive storage!
Written: Dec 17 '05
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Pros: small, massive capacity, easy to manage, scaleable
Cons: not quiet enough, email notification weak, cuts of file transfers for annoying reasons
The Bottom Line: If you need a ton of disk space and don't have physical space for a big PC, you can't beat this deal!
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| dmatsumo's Full Review: Buffalo Technology TeraStation 1TB NAS (DHHDH10TGL... |
Introduction:
When we had our first child, we were taking so many pictures and movies that I had to come up with a solution for all of the data. I was stupid and decided to build a PC with two 160GB drives in a RAID1 (redundant) array, running Windows 2000 Server. After all, I wanted to be able to set permissions on folders to prevent accidental deletion, and I thought that 160GB would be plenty!
Well, two years later, I've found that I was totally wrong. Between all of the photos and digital camera movies, as well as the large project files from our home videos, the 160GB was grossly inadequate. I had to find a better solution.
I had seen this TeraStation device many times at Fry's Electronics after I had built the file server, but never really wanted to try it. I was unsure of the quality and didn't want to risk putting our valuable pictures on this device. However, last week I finally gave in and purchased one from Comp-U-Plus.
What's in the box:
The TeraStation arrived yesterday, and I finally started to set it up tonight. I was amazed by the small form factor; it measures a mere 6.5" x 9.5"! Inside are four 250GB 7200RPM IDE hard drives. On the front of the box are two USB ports and a power switch. At the rear are the power connector, two more USB ports, an Ethernet jack, and a DB9 serial connector for UPS connectivity.
The USB ports may be used to add additional USB hard disks or more TeraStations. You can even hook up a USB printer, and the TeraStation will act as a print server! The newer models also support Gigabit Ethernet, which is really great because my laptop has Gigabit Ethernet, which truly speeds up the transfer of large image files.
Once I connected the power and Ethernet cables, I launched the configuration utility, which is completely web-based. The TeraStation had already received its IP address from the DHCP server, and the utility auto-recognized the device.
Configuration:
The web-based management interface is clean and intuitive. On the left, you are presented with several categories. Below, I've outlined the categories and their individual functions, along with a more detailed explanation, if necessary: (I apologize for the following formatting, as epinions does not allow usage of the UL and LI tags. If you would like a link to a nicer list, please post a comment)
o Home (nothing here is editable -- it's just a summary)
- TeraStation Name: what the TeraStation is known as on your network
- IP Address
- Current Date and Time
- HDD Space Used
o Basic
- Hostname setup
x TeraStation Hostname
x TeraStation Description
- Date and Time setup
x Date
x Time
x Time Zone
- NTP Settings: used to set up an NTP server that will automatically set the time info
x NTP Server [enable/disable]
x NTP Server Address
- Text Display Settings
x Language
x Windows Client Language
- Network Sharing Services
x AppleTalk Protocol [enable/disable]
x FTP Server [enable/disable]
o Network
- IP Address Properties
x Automatic via DHCP [enable/disable]: I recommend that you disable this, and set to an IP address that's easy to remember
x IP Address
x Subnet Mask [droplist for some reason, not an edit box]
x Default Gateway Address
x DNS Server Address
- http://www.netbook.cs.purdue.edu/othrpags/qanda87.htm
x Ethernet Frame Size [1,518 bytes / 4,100 bytes / 7,418 bytes]
- Workgroup / Domain
x Network Member [workgroup/domain]
x Workgroup Name
x Domain Name
x Domain Controller Name
x WINS Server IP Address
o Disk Management
- Drive Properties: info only
- RAID Configuration
x RAID Array Configuration: info only
x RAID Array Error Detection
> Automatic Shutdown [enable/disable]
- USB Settings: info about connected devices only
- Disk Check
x Target Disk: which TeraStation to check integrity of
- Disk Format
x Format
> Target Disk
> File System: seems to be "XFS" only
o Shared Folders
- Shared Folders Setup: where you create your network file shares and their access control lists
- Anonymous FTP Setup
x Anonymous FTP Server [enable/disable]
x Anonymous User Public Shared Folder
x Anonymous FTP Access [read only/writable]
o Group Management: where you create groups of users for access control list reasons
o User Management: where you create individual users for access control list reasons
o Print Server
- Print Server Settings
x Windows Print Server [enable/disable]
x Apple Print Server [enable/disable]
- Delete Print Queue
o Disk Backup
- Disk Backup: allows you to backup contents of one folder to another. I imagine that this is completely useless unless you have another USB drive connected, or another TeraStation. But if you have RAID 5, why bother at all?
- TeraStation List
- Add TeraStation
o PCast: this actually brings up a completely different interface in another browser window. I don't know how to use this yet, but will update this epinion once I play with this feature some more.
o Maintenance
- Mail Notification: this feature is completely useless, unless you have access to a spammable SMTP server that doesn't require sender authentication. I've tried it with my earthlink mail settings, but it obviously didn't work, since I couldn't enter my username / password anywhere.
- UPS Settings: I don't have a UPS serial cable, and I haven't tried a standard RS-232 cable yet. In my experience, APC uses a proprietary pinout, so I doubt that it would even work with the TeraStation. However, for the sake of a complete review, I'll give this feature a try and update the review accordingly.
x Synchronize with UPS [enable/disable]
x UPS Automatic Shutdown
- Disk Sleep Function: allows you to schedule when the TeraStation is accessible. More on this later
x Disk Sleep [enable/disable]
x Disk Sleep Time: when to go to sleep
x Disk Wake Up Time: when to wake up again
- Shutdown TeraStation: this may be better than hitting the off button on the front panel
- Initialization: sets the behavior of the TeraStation when the little red INIT button on the rear panel is pressed
- Admin Password [reset/remain]
o System Status: just an informational overview
- System Information
- USB Details
- Drive Properties
- Network Information
- User Access Status
My setup experience:
Phew! As you can see, there is an exhaustive list of settngs on the TeraStation. However, you don't need to go through all of these items to get it ready to use. Here's what I did:
The first thing I did was set up the TeraStation with a static IP address, so in case there were issues with name resolution, I could always reach it by using the IP address. I created a couple of users, one for myself and another for my wife. I then took a look at the drive configuration to see if it was configured the way I wanted it (RAID5), and it was. The TeraStation actually supports FOUR drive configurations: 1) separate drives, 2) RAID0, 3) RAID1), and 4) RAID5. I discourage the usage of modes 1 and 2 if you plan on storing critical or data of sentimental value. If a disk fails in mode 1, you'll lose everything on that disk. If a disk fails in mode 2, you'll lose *everything*. Mode 3 is very safe because data is mirrored on pairs of drives, but it effectively cuts your storage capacity from 1TB to 500GB. I went with RAID5 because it's a good blend of capacity (750GB) and safety (if a disk fails, you won't lose any data as long as you replace the failed disk soon after).
Once I had verified that the disk configuration was complete, I proceeded to create the network shares. It was very simple to create the two I needed -- pictures and movies. I could have set up permissions on these folders based on the user accounts I had already created, but I didn't bother to do it.
That was pretty much it, and I was able to transfer files over to the TeraStation in no time! However, during the process, I noticed a few annoying problems. First of all, if you are modifying settings in the web interface while transferring files, the file transfer will get cut off as soon as you save the settings! In addition, you can specify hard disk "sleep times", where the drives spin down for a desired period of time. I set mine to sleep from midnight - 9AM. Well, I decided to transfer a bunch of photos tonight, and as soon as midnight arrived, the drives shut down and my file transfer failed! Surely, the engineers at Buffalo could have predicted something like this and changed the behavior to sleep AFTER all file activity has finished. Finally, this unit is far from silent. My old file server (a quiet PC Power and Cooling PC) was much quieter than this. There is also a little bit of vibration that gets transmitted through whatever the TeraStation is placed on.
The verdict
Given the few flaws that I've seen so far in the TeraStation, I believe this is truly a good bang for the buck. I paid over $1000 for the silent file server PC that only had 160GB of space, and it was much larger than this. The TeraStation offers a whopping 750GB of space in a small package that's easily managed via a simple web interface!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 765
Driver Availability: Other
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Epinions.com ID:
dmatsumo
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Location: San Jose, CA
Reviews written: 81
Trusted by: 19 members
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