Review of 1TB Buffalo Technology TeraStation Pro II

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/review/2007/04/23/Buffalo-Technology-TeraStation-Pro-II-1-0TB/p1' target='_blank'>http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/review/2007/04/23/Buffalo-Technology-TeraStation-Pro-II-1-0TB/p1</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Buffalo Technology has traditionally been a big player in the entry-level NAS appliance market thanks to its TeraStation products. The TeraStation Pro impressed with its excellent range of features and tempting price tag and now we take a look at the TeraStation Pro II, which aims to improve on the performance of its predecessor. There’s nothing new to see externally as the Pro II uses the same chassis as the Pro model and you also get the same backlit LCD display above the drives. A button alongside enables you to cycle through viewing the status of the network connection and its assigned IP address, the date and time, which disks are in use and the RAID configurations. The network connection is still served by a single Gigabit Ethernet port and the USB port count remains at two. These are used to connect external storage devices but note that USB printers are still not supported."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/4462-tshtglr5bw.jpg" /><br /><br />Hmm, I don't know if this is worth the almost $1000, especially if I get only 1TB. It does offer hot swap capabilities and multiple RAID configurations, but other than the hot swappability, I don't know what I wouldn't get from a nice motherboard that supports RAID. Plus, with the latter, I would have an actual machine as well. Honestly, if there was a NAS device I would get now, it would only be the <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12018&highlight=totally+awesome">Drobo</a>.

[cameron]

I can strongly recommend that anyone considering a NAS solution steer as far away from Buffalo as you possibly can. I have the previous version of the 1tb Terrastation. Let's see...

1. Technical support is horrendous. "the problem is with your router" even though numerous others are having the same problem using different routers.

2. Don't plan on using accessing it via FTP from outside your network. It doesn't matter whether you have ports forwarded correctly or not, its probably not going to work.

3. I hope you don't need it all the time - because it will periodically disappear from the network, and may not work on your network at all. When I first hooked it up, I connected it directly to my router. Nothing else could see the Terrastation (couldn't even ping it). I had to connect it to a hub which was then connected to a router to get it to work. A few weeks later, it disappeared from the network - no amount of fiddling would get it to work. So I moved it to a different location where it now goes through two hubs to get to the router - and it works.

[ptyork]

Honestly, if there was a NAS device I would get now, it would only be the Drobo (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12018&highlight=totally+awesome).
I missed the discussion of the drobo before, but it definitely looks cool. However, unless I missed something, it isn't a NAS at all since it isn't networkable by itself. Maybe a drobo network edition with the addition of a GB ethernet port would be ideal, but honestly for $700, I don't expect to have to keep an attached PC on at all times. At least in the consumer world where I'm most likely just trying to keep a central media repository. I don't have any experience with windows home server, but this seems like a superior solution on paper. Here, you also get the flexibility of having it run a few network apps, as well.