New Buffalo Terabyte NAS

[slocko]

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/29...gy_terastation

These things are finally hitting affordable price points.

[drew138]

I saw this too. Awesome! 1000gb for around $1000.00 enclosed in a NAS server.

Considering a external, non-NAS Maxtor 250G drive is about 250; I'd say this is a pretty good deal. It looks kind of big though.

Drew

[slocko]

Size really doesn't matter sicne this thing will sit in a closet or basement somewhere. It's meant to be hidden.

Built in raid 5. The best part, is that it can only get cheaper!!!!!!!!!

Sure you can build one for less, but this is probably plug and play.

[eq_shadimar]

If you click on the link to the company's home page in the article you can see that it is not that much bigger then 4 ide hard drives. The picture makes it look massive but on the home page the show the case with a human hand and it is pretty compact.

Laters,
Jeff

[lanny]

I've worked with a few of the smaller Buffalo NAS drives (250GB). They are solid products with surprisely good connectivity. I've found most cosumer NAS devices tend to like to cycle on/off your network. Kind of annoying.

The only problem with the Buffalo devices is the lack of a USB or Firefire connection to the PC. You can connect a downstream devices (ie. external drive), but not your PC. The only way to connect is via the network. This is okay for day to day usage, but is really poor for bulk transfers. I'm not sure if this is something the 1 TB solutions has or not, but something to look for.

lanny

[jerndl]

Originally posted by lanny
The only problem with the Buffalo devices is the lack of a USB or Firefire connection to the PC. You can connect a downstream devices (ie. external drive), but not your PC. The only way to connect is via the network. This is okay for day to day usage, but is really poor for bulk transfers. I'm not sure if this is something the 1 TB solutions has or not, but something to look for.

According to info in the above link this device does not have that limitation. It has both USB 2.0 direct to PC connectivity and Gigabit Ethernet.

The TeraStation, which will hopefully be available in the states early next year, is both Macintosh and Windows compatible, capable of RAID-1 (creates an exact copy of all of data on two or more disks) or RAID-5 storage configurations (better redundancy option in case one drive fails), and provides both a 1000Mbps Gigabit Ehternet (standard Ethernet is 10/100Mbps) port and USB 2.0 port for direct to PC connectivity.

Jay

[drew138]

The earlier comment about the device only getting cheaper is only partially correct; it could also get larger (as in more storage capacity).

I really like this thing.

[lanny]

Jay - Thanks for the catch on the USB port. This is good to know.
lanny

[slocko]

hey don't nitpick

as the capacity gets larger, I bet that the price per gig will only get cheaper.

i like it too.

by the time i finally get around to building my htpc (bought all the parts almost a year and a half ago and they are still boxed) it is going to be even bigger and probably the same price or a little more.

Originally posted by drew138
The earlier comment about the device only getting cheaper is only partially correct; it could also get larger (as in more storage capacity).

I really like this thing.

[Shieldsj]

Does anyone know if this device can support an O/S other than Windows?

Are any flavors of Unix an option?


-jim

[flamaest]

Most of these NAS boxes use standard routing protocols, so they should be visible to "almost" any OS.

Except the Ximeta NDAS drives, stay away from these units, it requires special software to be visible on a clinet, very stupid.

Buffalo is ok.. others are:


-Tritton
-Guslink and
-SNAP NAS products


F.

[Lon]

I contacted Buffalo on expected ship dates. The indication is that these units will reach the distribution channels late 1st quarter 2005.

I am impressed by the price point. Might be worth getting two...

[plyons10]

The Buffalo site is all in Japanese, so I couldn't tell, but is it safe to assume they are using SATA drives? I wonder what drives they are using and how easily I can buy add'l drives in the future.

I'd expect to be running RAID 5 on this. I was looking at building my own RAID box with SATA drives later this year, but I'd say this product would save me alot of time and maybe even money in the long run.

My music server (Audiotron) works well with NAS devices. My video solution (DVArchive with multiple ReplayTVs) would still require a PC, but at least this would centralize my storage.

It would also allow me to tuck this box away in a locked corner of my basement, which really makes the physical security much greater. The basement is well fire and water proofed. But I have always had a greater worry about a burglar, who would almost certainly grab any computer equipment in my home office, but would not likely find this box sitting in a locked closet in the basement.

That way, for all but the most precious data, I would not feel so compelled to maintain an off site copy.

[drew138]

Or build your own.....

http://www.mashie.org/casemods/udat1.html

[Shakiesam]

Originally posted by plyons10
The Buffalo site is all in Japanese, so I couldn't tell, but is it safe to assume they are using SATA drives?

Google's Automatic Translation http://www.google.com/help/faq_translation.html
does a pretty good job on this site....Sam

[MIS-Man]

I can contact buffalo and see if we can get a group buy together. USB 2.0 cards are CHEAP(I bought a couple or some older PC's for about $12 each) if you don't have one natively in your PC. Would people be interested if we could get these in the $800 range?

[MIS-Man]

By the way, I would get one for $800 for sure. If you have WinXP or Win2K (server or WS) or Server 2003 you can do remote storage management (can't remember the name of it right this second) and use DVArchive without issue and store on this bad bear over ethernet (if by USB 2.0 of course totally a non-issue) but I would want this in my basement - nice an cool. Also, Gigabit NIC's and Switches are CHEAP nowadays (I just got two from Dell for less than $60 each for 8 porters) - this woudl scream over Gigabit.

[drew138]

This was announced for a Feb March release in the US for aroud 999 MSRP. SHould be able to knock a $150 off through the web and have these down to 750 or less by this time next year. Hopefully

[Hallov]

Checked if this was released in Hong Kong yet; but no such luck. Hopefully they will start turning up soon.

[KidSquid]

Here's the link for all the info in English

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...&categoryid=19

Squid

[plyons10]

I'm surprised they're not using SATA drives!

[Lon]

Buffalo Technology's website now has the release date for the Terastation in March. A link to sites selling the unit is now active!

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...&categoryid=19

[turls]

Originally posted by MIS-Man
I can contact buffalo and see if we can get a group buy together. USB 2.0 cards are CHEAP(I bought a couple or some older PC's for about $12 each) if you don't have one natively in your PC. Would people be interested if we could get these in the $800 range?

Well, if you were serious about this (and if you see this 2 months later), please also ask them about the possiblity of buying one bare. I'd like to put in my own 400GB+ drives.

Also, at one point they were saying they only officially supported their own drives. Since many higher capacity drives are coming with 5 year warranties now, that is another reason I'd rather just populate it myself.

[plyons10]

Buy.com is offering only pre-release orders. But they do list slightly different specs for the device, describing the drives as 4 x 250mb standard drives. This makes sense, since Buffalo doesn't even make their own hard drives anyway.

Unfortunately, someone is going to have to take the plunge and see what happens when you put some 400 GB drives in there. Of course, you must be able to switch the drives -- isn't that the whole point of RAID?????

I too would be interested in buying one of these bare bones.

[truaudiophile]

Some of the preordered models were released on the 16th. I was not one of them. I am going to wait to hear some feedback and see how well they work. I am crossing my fingers that this will be the answer!! The sales lady on the phone said it could take up to three weeks to receive one.

pylons10, you're going to buy one anyway

[plyons10]

I don't think so... not right away, anyway. I'm an early adopter, but I'm not a masochist -- the price is sure to drop by 10-25% in the next 8 months.

[turls]

Preordered from where? If you check the links on Buffalo's site there are many different places to pre-order from.

Also, I dug a little deeper on the web site. If you look at the knowledge base there are already entries on the TeraStation. It comes with WD 250GB 7200RPM 2MB cache drives. I'm still looking at some of the other entries. It does also say you can replace the drives with larger than 250GB drives when one goes bad, but obviously if you are RAID 5 you won't get the extra capacity.

I may go ahead and get one because I'm tired of not having a comprehensive backup solution for my media. I can always buy another one later and sell the original. Potentially the drives in the thing are worth something as well. I just think they probably won't sell it bare soon because they are using the drives to pad their margin.

Sample item:

http://www.buffalotech.com/KB/index....tId=1&catId=10

Originally posted by truaudiophile
Some of the preordered models were released on the 16th. I was not one of them. I am going to wait to hear some feedback and see how well they work. I am crossing my fingers that this will be the answer!! The sales lady on the phone said it could take up to three weeks to receive one.

[plyons10]

Originally posted by turls
Potentially the drives in the thing are worth something as well. I just think they probably won't sell it bare soon because they are using the drives to pad their margin.

No doubt you are correct.

So... at $1K for the whole unit, figure the drives are worth only about $100 apiece.... That's $600 for the bare box. This is why I can't stomach it.

[Toastermax]

this is what really sucks with these companies, why cant they just sell us the box?? why would they want to warranty the drive which they dont make??

[REWJR]

The turn off for me is NON SATA drives so it will not work for archiving my HD8300 HDTV PVR . Wake me up when someone has a model that supports SATA drives and hot swapable HDD's .

Also support for MCE 2005 .