Review: Buffalo Terastation Pro II network-attached storage

Buffalo Technology has released a second generation of its Terastation Pro – the network-attached storage (Nas) appliance we tested last year.

Available in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB formats, the Pro II is faster than its predecessor, with a new processor plus enhanced Raid protection, expansion and backup facilities.

The hardware is much the same as before, with four Western Digital Caviar disks mounted in a small desktop server, now powered by a 500MHz Marvell processor.

The disks now come with faster 300Mbits/sec Sata interfaces, in what Buffalo describes as ‘quick-swap’ trays behind the lockable front door. Not quite hot-swap – you still have to power down to change them – but good enough for most small businesses, especially given the inherent reliability of modern disks.

Data can be further protected using the built-in Raid facilities with a single Raid 5 array whereby data is striped across all the spindles, along with parity information to automatically rebuild lost information should one of the disks fail. The downside is loss of capacity, with less than three-quarters available in this configuration.

That’s still a lot of storage, especially if you opt for the 2TB model (£670 ex Vat) or the 3TB appliance (£1,276 ex Vat). However, you can reconfigure the array via the built-in web interface. In Raid 0 mode, only the data is striped, losing any redundancy. Alternatively, for maximum protection, the disks can be configured as mirrored pairs (Raid 1) or as a faster single-mirrored, striped volume (Raid 10), these setups halving the space available for data.

Changing Raid settings is pretty easy, but can take a long time (hours in some cases), plus you need to make the changes early as existing data will be lost, requiring backups to be taken if you change your mind after installation. Note that although two external USB disks can be attached to expand capacity, they can’t be included in a Raid set.

As with the previous model, deployment is straightforward. On our network an IP address was assigned by DHCP and we were quickly able to join the Terastation to our Active Directory domain. Older NT domains and Windows workgroups are also supported and the server shared on Apple networks. An FTP server is also built in.

Custom client software can be used to access the shared data, but on a Windows network a default public share is available straightaway and Windows users can browse and open this just like any other network resource. In addition, it’s possible to create custom shares and restrict access to files and folders.

Scheduled backup facilities are another built-in option, plus there’s UPS support for managed shutdown in the event of a power cut. Alerting facilities are similarly on hand to let you know when attention is required.

A big and extremely quiet fan is another plus, but the on-off switch is still unprotected, which means anyone could power down the appliance. Another slight problem is the lack of support for NT Lan Manager v2, which means patching Vista PCs before they can access data on the Terastation, even after we applied the latest firmware.

However, you do get Memeo software to keep client PCs backed up automatically, plus it’s very much a fit-and-forget Nas solution – made even faster in this new version.

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