Customer Reviews

Buffalo HD-H1.OTGL/R5 TeraStation Terabyte Network Attached Storage 1.0 TB

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

The previous reviewer is right - this isn't a blazing fast device. On a 100mbit network, using raid 1, I got roughly 5-7MB/s. That's pretty slow but I probably couldn't expect much more from a 100mbit network anyway. I don't have a gig network to try this on.

The previous reviewer said you can only FTP to one dir. He's right in that it only lets you set up one directory, but I've noticed that if you login as admin via ftp you get both arrays (assuming you are running raid 1) listed - array1 and array2, and you can go into either one. This is important for reasons I will describe later.

Setup is trivial and takes five or ten minutes. The system comes with this "Easy Backup" software which makes simple backups (zip files) of directories you tell it to zip up on a periodic basis. There are few problems with the software - (1) it "detects" your Terastation - meaning that if you have any sort of software or hardware firewall it probably won't "detect" anything. I had to disable all my security for it to detect the terastation. No, it's not smart enough to let you punch in an IP. (2) The zips it saves on the Terastation are named in a meaningless way (987x9a.zip) - meaning that if you ever had to restore anything without EasyBackup you'd have a tough time finding the right zip. (3) It backs up everything every time it runs - there's no incremental backup. So if you have a 10GB directory to backup every day, in 10 days you'll have 100GBs of zip files that are nearly identical. (4) Speaking of which, it doesnt have any logical maximum to zip file sizes. If you give it a 10GB directory, it'll make a 10GB zip. Ever try and open a 10GB zip? It doesn't go so well. Overall, EasyBackup is an OK tool (it is, after all, free) but it isn't a particularly great one.

The rest of my complaints have to do with Mac support. I bought the device to backup my PCs (array1) and my Mac (array2). My Mac has most of my videos, audio files, etc. I leaned towards the buffalo because it specifically supported both PCs and Macs either via Appletalk or SMB shares. Problem is, the Appletalk really doesn't work too well... When copying large files over Appletalk, it will error out "Disk is Full" (it's not). Try and copy the same file from a Unix shell with cp (rather than drag and drop via finder), and you get the same error. This brings us to the second set of problems. "Long" file names, or file names with certain characters in them - ', &, etc. The buffalo doesn't like these either, and if you have thousands of audio files that may contain either long file names or odd characters, it becomes nearly impossible to go through each one looking for ones that might cause problems. Ok, so I can't copy big (>2GB) files and I can't copy files with special characters. At least not via Appletalk or mounting it as a samba share on my mac.

Remember how you can access any directory if you ftp as admin? Well, this is a good thing because, for some reason, all of the above problems with the mac support dissapear if you copy the files via FTP. I copied a few 5GB files with no problems and plenty of long file names with odd characters. For you technical folk - oddly enough, if you use the shell based smbclient command to copy files the problems also dissapear.

Conclusion?

The software it comes with is mediocre. You'll want better backup software. The speed is OK - not fast - not slow. If you are using this as a backup device, whether your backup runs from 1am to 4am or 1am to 2am doesn't really matter to you does it? It's fast enough to play video off of, or listen to music off of. Mac support is there but has a few kinks.

If you are looking for a high speed dedicated disk system to serve up videos and audio to your whole house - this is probably not the best device. In that case, build yourself a PC with a 1TB of disk space - it'll be faster and more flexible. If you are looking for a no-hassle (set it and forget it) backup device and don't care too much about how fast your backups are, the buffalo terastation is a good choice.

I was excited when I was finally able to pick up the 1.0gb Terastation at Fry's 3/14. Got it home and followed the start-up manual for setting up a RAID 5 array (700gb total capacity -- not the 750gb volume as advertised).

Immediately I noticed very slow writes when copying files to the Terasation (63 seconds to copy an 80mb file; 2:24 minutes to copy a 140gb file). I had the unit plugged into a Netgear 5-port gigabit switch and was copying files from a gigabit equipped workstation; therefore, I know the slow copy issue is not network related.

I called Buffalo Tech Support; they could provide no useful answers and escaled the problem to a senior support specialist, then said I would receive a call from him within 48 hours. I then investigated the problem on my own by reformatting the unit into Spanning mode (1tb config). The copy times were significantly better (15 seconds to copy an 80mb file) and what I would normally expect across a gigabit backbone. Next I tried RAID 1 (mirroring mode) and copy times were only slightly slower than Spanning mode; again as expected due to writing across two drives. But when I switched back to RAID 5 again I had very slow write times.

Another call to tech support revealed that RAID 5 mode is software-based, not hardware based which obviously is the problem. However, there is no mention of this in Buffalo's literature about the Terastation. Again they could not supply any solutions to the problem. Incidentally, I never received any call backs from their senior support person. So they then told me that someone from the engineering staff would call me the next business day. I'm still waiting.

I could only recommend this product if you want to use in Spanning mode, but then of course you need a way to back-up 900mb worth of data. RAID 1 only mirrors 2 individual drives so you only get two 230gb volumes, even though there are four separate 250gb drives in the unit. It would be more logical to RAID two drives together into a 500mb volume then mirror that to another 500mb volume but the set-up doesn't allow you do this.

This could have been a good product but it's half-baked and tech support is useless. I'd wait on buying until they work the bugs out.

I bought a TeraStation. Until I upgraded to the latest 1.08 firmware (came out June 23, 2005), I was dissapointed with the speed. However, as you shall see below, I am now quite satisfied with the speed after the firmware upgrade.

Using a RAID 5 configuration, I now get 22 MB / second (168 mbps) read/download speeds, and 11 MB / second (88 mbps) write speeds, when simply copy/pasting a bunch of small and large files to/from the TeraStation to my P4 2.4ghz HTPC.

My networking is set up as follows: Gigabit ethernet Intel Pro/1000MT card in the PC, jumbo frames enabled (9K), category 6 ethernet cable to an SMC 8-port gigabit router with jumbo frames support, and another category 6 cable to the TeraStation. The TeraStation is a 1TB model with Raid5 enabled and jumbo frames set to 7.4K size. If I recall correctly by heart, without Jumbo frames, I got about 104 mbps read (download) on my gigabit network, and 60 mbps write/upload speed.

I have nothing but good things to say about it. From the cool status emails I get on a daily basis, to the neat built-in backup jobs I can set up (I plugged in an external USB 2.0 drive into one of the TeraStation's 4 USB ports, and it backs up my already RAID-5 protected critical data every wednesday night to that hard drive. Neat.) and the great web-based user interface and configuration options.

My Mac Mini is happy with the TeraStation too (connect using SMB not AFP... otherwise your 4GB+ files will not show up)

I looked into getting a network hard drive to attach to my home network for backing up data. I wanted something that could be visible from any computer on the network (with access rights). What I found available was disappointing.

Most of the available systems either costs thousands of dollars, or were cheap and had no redundancy. When I came across the terastation line, I was pleasantly surprised.

The biggest positive I found that separated these units from the other less expensive ones is the fact that they have gigabit network interfaces built in. I run a gigabit network, and gigabit is fantastic with respect to transfer speeds. To give you any idea how fast gigabit can be, some systems can transfer files via gigabit network faster than it can write to it's own internal hard drive! I wanted to make sure my centralized file storage device wasn't a limiting factor in the performance of my home network. Having one that had only 10/100 built in would make it so.

The other thing I liked was that it has four drives in it, and the array is customizable either four visible/useable drives, a pair of mirrored drives, or a RAID 5 array - one large drive that is 3/4 the total size of the sum of the drives. a 1.0GB terastation gives ~750GB of space. RAID 5 gives the best of both worlds so that's what I wanted to go with. The only downside to RAID 5 is the apparent loss of performance that some users report.

A performance loss that I expected, that never materialized is the fact that there is no built in file defragmentation utility. PC hard drives that have constant file addition/deletion need periodic defragmenting (removal of spaces that exist between files on the drive). Fragmentation decreases system performance and can cause a computer to become buggy and even cause freezes or lockups. I expected to see this problem over time on my terastation.

That's where this system excels. PCs use a different type of filesystem (the way the files are organized, as well as written to the disk). This system uses a filesystem called XFS, which has an inherent automatic defragmenting system as part of the filesystem - and thus never needs manual defragmenting like a PC does.

The one thing I would change if I had the chance is that I would have purchased the 'Home Server' version of this device. This version includes streaming media software built into the firmware that allows for the unit to play the media to either a computer, or another device that Buffalo makes called a LinkTheater. This device is essentially a DVD player that has a built-in connection to the TeraStation for use as a streaming media store. Maybe someday I'll upgrade because most of the files I keep on my TeraStation are family photos and home videos. Things that would be really nice to be able to stream to the TV when the family's all together for the holidays.

While this might not be the best system for business users, for the price, home users can't even come close to the features at this pricepoint. The closest match is Iomega's new 200d drive, which similarly equipped runs well over $2000.

I purchased a terastation a number of months back and I should have returned it when I had problems getting it set up on my network initially, but I made the silly assumption that the problem was with my computer which was starting to have a few problems.

Well today I installed a new computer and guess what? The terastation doesn't work again. Well that's not totally true, it appears to work if I leave the terastation at its default IP address but if I change the IP address to match my network the terastation wont respond.

Whats worse is that it took three calls to their tech support to find out that papa bear thought it should work with my IP address, mama bear didn't think that it would work at any IP address except the default of 192,168... and baby bear wasn't sure. One would think that they would at least have a common story by now.

Their solution, reload the firmware. Of course I can't do that because the utility that they use wont over write the existing firmware if its the latest version.

So my choice is to either change all of the IP addresses on my network to match the default terastation address or use it as an expensive door stop.

I use this in RAID-5 mode so that if any single hard disk fails, it can be reconstructed using the data on the other 3 drives.

This has numerous features, including USB external drive support that can be used to backup files (scheduled, or not) incrementally or overwrite completely.

I serve up a number of individual FTP directories to distinct users, so the notion that it has only 1 FTP directory is simply wrong.

Speed: I have other network storage units and this is the one I prefer to use, and it's fast on my network, who knows what's up with the slow speed reported by some. I do have the latest firmware 1.12, and updating the firmware is easy.

I have used the USB ports for other backup drives, they work fine, and a very nice addition. There are 4 USB ports to support 4 external USB drives. I've formatted them in the XMS format mode so they can be designated as targets for backing up directories from the Terastation.

In my opinion, this device exceeds expectations, it runs quietly, it turns off hard disks after 30 minutes of non-use, it has a sleep mode to shut down at night if you wish, scheduled backups to USB devices is built-in, e-mail reports when backups are complete is built-in, and NTP access to network time is easily setup and works great.

You can setup users and groups, with password for users, and allow access to directories by group or individual user.

What more do you want? 4 250-Gbyte drives, 4-USB drive support, print server, FTP server (which I now use instead of a windows server), and lower power than a full-blown computer.

Would I recommend this device? Yes, without reservation.

Works great out-of-box. 15-minute setup.
As simple file server, share, backup device, Terastation great. I bought 2nd one after short success with 1st one.

Pros:
IP congif, RAID-0 setup, FTP setup, file shares all work great. Streaming videos are smooth.

Cons:
Seems to have flaky file write caching. Over time I can't write large files to NAS. Made some network configuratin changes - bad move - toasted data on my 3&4 drives. Tech support couldn't save data lost. Data on drive 1&2 can be saved. But had to reformat entire NAS to start over. Months later, had to replace my router. Changed Terastation to Static IP while waiting for new router. Installed new router and changed IP back to DHCP (dynamic) - 2nd bad move - BAM! Japanese characters abound. I can't read Japanese. Lost access to all data. Contacted telephone support 4 times only to be disconnected 4 times after 15-minutes wait. Left message for tech support to return call. Tech support got in contact with me, but always at bad times. No resolution to my problem.

Conclusion:
Use Terastation only as "TEMP" drive. Data is not safe by any means according to my experience. Losing data twice seals its fate. You should be fine if using device as simple external temporary storage. Once you have everything dialed in the way you like it, then start putting data on it. But do not change configuration moving forward. Bad things happen. You should back up critical data on another media.

Summary:
TeraStation is a workhorse. Huge capacity for the money, great redundancy if set up as a RAID 1 or RAID 5, hooks right on to a network with ease, offers 4 USB ports for other external drive to hook in. Improvements in the TeraStation should include a better network interface connection, better documentation and troubleshooting, a feature to copy to and from the external USB ports directly to the TeraStation without having to use a PC as a go-between.

Review:
Depending on your needs, the terastation may be the perfect NAS for you. I have a young daughter and gigabytes of home videos taken over the years that simply take up too much space on the PC. I bought the terastation to hold the videos and to stream to the other PCs and to a media player in the living room.

First, the Terastation is one of the only NAS that offers a RAID 5 configuration. This means that you can voluntarily forego 1/4th of the total capactity (net space available becomes around 750GB) to provide redundancy should any of its 4 internal drives crash or fail. Since I cannot easily replace the home videos, this is a great option to protect against a hard drive failure within the device.

Second, the device is quiet and efficient. It runs smoothly and is always available when I need to access a file on its drives.

Third, I really like the fact that I can use it to hook up 4 external hard drives to the network using its attached USB ports.

The drawbacks:
The transfer rate is below par for a 1Gb ethernet connection. I cannot get transfer rates beyond 120 Mbps (12% of the "potential). At first, I blamed my older PC which may not be powerful enough to handle the 1Gb transfer rate (I installed the gigabit card in the PC aftermarket), but after reading other reviews, I think it may be the device itself.

Also, while I love the USB ports, I have a Maxtor external hard drive that is recognized 50% of the time by the device after a reboot. I unplug/replug the USB cable a few times and it'll eventually recognize the drive and see the data on it. I only experience this problem once in a long while (I rarely reboot the terastation), but still a real pain. My other USB external hard drives work fine.

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to copy data from these external USB drives to the Terastation without having to send the data over the from the USB drive to the network to a PC and then to the Terastation HDD.

Lastly, while I find it annoying, it is really a great feature: after a power failure, the device reboots and spends about 12 hours running diagnostics on the 4 hard drives to ensure no data was damaged. This is great, but it means the device is sorta "unavailable" during this time (sorta because you can use it after a short while, but any transfer of data competes with the drives self-diagnostics). The best solution to this is to buy a battery backup for ~$50 that automatically notifies the Terastation to shut down after a power outage. This avoids the need for the diagnostic event when the power comes back on.

This product is not serviceable after one year warranty! Am informed by Buffalo tech support that the root operating system is not accessible by Buffalo or anyone except the Japanese firm they appear to only be resellers for and who do not offer support. I bought two of these Terastations and one of them failed to boot after only three months. If this happens to you after the warranty, you are out the considerable purchase price (as much as $1000!) as no one can service it. I found Buffalo tech support extremely difficult to reach and not adequately knowledgeable of their own product. Buffalo's system for RMAs is also a hassle. I strongly advise to avoid buying this product that Buffalo is maintaining an obviously deceptive support position on.

My client had been using a TeraStation 1Tb as the main file server. It works as advertised, but after 18 months it died, the unit shut itself down and when we restarted it, it can no longer connect. Since it is out of warranty, Buffalo will do nothing for us, NOT EVEN SELL US A REPLACEMENT CORE. They offer no extended warranty, although the support supervisor was kind enough to call Austin HQ with the problem, they still won't budge. So if you are considering using this as the main file server, or any Buffalo product in a crirtical business application, BE WARNED.