I recently purchased a Buffalo Terastation HS.
I bought the 1GB model, which contains four 250MB ATA drives. I configured them as a RAID 5 array, which gave me a total of 750MB of disk space.
I’ve downloaded replacement firmware for the device from the dedicated fans at Terastation.org. This firmware adds the ability to telnet to the device. Once you do that, you can access the embedded Linux upon which the device operates.
Theoretically, I could replace the 4 250GB disks with larger drives, but 750GB fits my storage needs — today.
The real downside to the device is performance. The unit is CPU bound and that limits the speed at which you can copy data to and from the device.
Performance of a NAS device will never quite equal performance of DASD. I chose to go with a NAS solution because I wanted RAID 5 and I wanted a central storage device which would not be reliant on any of our computers.
The best feature of this NAS solution is the price. This is an awesome price for a home of SMB NAS solution.
If you don’t need high-performance file copies, this device is highly recommended.
Product Features
- Four operational modes: Standard, Spanning, Mirroring and RAID 5
- Removable hard drive rack allows quick swapping of hard drives should a drive fail
- 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port and Jumbo Frame capability for higher transfer speeds
- Four USB 2.0 ports, allowing 4 simultaneous USB connections
- Built-in print server for sharing and managing a USB printer on the network.
Technical Details
- Model: HS-D1.0TGL/R5
- Item Package Quantity: 1
- Hardware Platform: PC
- Device Type: NAS server
- Form Factor: External
- Interface: USB 2.0
- Number of Ports: 4
- Data Transmission Speed: 480 Mbps (HS Mode), 12 Mbps (FS Mode)
- Storage Capacity Maximum: 1 TB
- Raid Level: RAID 1, RAID 5
- Number of Hard Drives: 4
- Hard Disk Size: 250 GB
- Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
- LAN Standards Compliance: IEEE802.3u (100 Base-TX), IEEE802.3 (10 Base-T)
- Transmission Speed: 10/100/1000 Mbps
- Transmission Encoding Method: 1000 BASE-T: 8B1Q4, PAM5
- Access Method: CSMA/CD
- WAN/LAN Port Connector: RJ-45
- Transmission Distance: 328 feet
- Operating Temperature: 32 to 95 degrees F
- Height: 9.5 inches
- Width: 6.6
- Depth: 8.7 inches
- Weight: 15.9 pounds
- System Requirements: Windows XP/2000/Me/NT 4.0/98 SE, Linux (SMB)
