Buffalo has already let a 3TB TeraStation Pro
loose in Japan, but the company's now upping the
NAS ante 'round these parts as well, introducing a beefed-up TeraStation Pro II for businesses and a new TeraStation Live for the rest of us. True to its consumer nature, the TeraStation Live boasts both iTunes server capabilities and
DLNA adherence, while the TeraStation Pro II adds UPS compatibility and Active Directory support, in addition to a number of extra administrative features. Both NASes are otherwise pretty much identical, with two USB 2.0 ports to accomodate some external hard drives (in case 3TB isn't enough for ya), four hard drives on the inside, and support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 configurations. Each device is also identical when it comes to price, with both available now for $2,499 apiece.
[Via
SmallNetBuilder]
posted May 14th 2007 3:04PM
Well, sure, you could buy 4 drives for $900, but with the NAS for $1200, you get that in a case, thats rack mountable and has a computer attached to it. If you can build all of that and get the software configured for $300, by all means.
That said, I'm not counting on the teraserver to secure my data. Every RAID system I've ever dealt with in 15 years of being around RAID have failed to live up to the promise. Either controllers fail and constantly report drives as bad, when they are not, or a drive failure recover is way more complex than it should be (not plug and play due to some glitch). I'm still waiting to get a good RAID experience, where I can replace the failed drive in an array and have the system rebuild from there.
I do find it annoying that they partition the OS features. After all, why not have a rackmount version that can do media serving? No big deal, though, because the media playing appliances can find the shares and get the media from them.
The only feature I really wish was available in the software was spinning down of the drives when not in use.. that is, sleeping the system.
so, I can buy 6 500GB (3 TB) drives for 150$ a piece = 900$ (likely less since I bought one a month ago).
Better be something really snazzy in there for the extra 1500$
Agreed.
Look... I know this is silly to comment about here (being an unrelated article and all)... but why can't we comment on Ross Rubin's articles? What is he afraid of?
I will keep trashing Buffalo as long as they do not supply, or find suppliers for, a replacement fan for their HD 250 Linkstation. Ridiculous that lack of a $5 cooling fan would render a remote backup Hard Drive useless.
On somewhat of the same note as tundraboy... I would never buy a product from Buffalo based off our 2TB loss when we bought a TeraStation Pro. The software [onboard] corrupted after 2 weeks, had to be replaced 6 different times... and then finally died. 2TB of data is VERY expensive to recover! I followed the build your own NAS guide on SmallNetBuilder and it's hundreds of times faster... and hasn't failed!
Don't buy this product!
PS: Their support staff are awful to try and work with!
I meant I agree that it is cheaper to just buy the hard drives separately. Anybody who buys this is a fool and you know what they say.. a fool and his money soon depart.
Ok, nifty, so they have 4 750s in there.... I purchased a Infrant NV+, and it has all those capabilitles.... and they are $650, go to Fry's and buy 4 500gb HDs for $119 each, and you are set (oh, and a APC 350 UPS), and you are rockin'....
How do you change your password for theses comment posts? I always have to look it up in my email to post...
SAME NIGHTMARE with this products as cullerClassic. The terra pro never works for us and ended up bei9ng a 1200$ brick with horror stories trying to deal with incompetents support staff.
Stay away from anything buffalo