Alternatives to Buffalo TeraStation NAS
 

I'm looking for a low-cost RAID 5 NAS. The Buffalo TeraStation seems to fit the bill, but I've read some reviews saying it's not great in a Mac environment (even though it's Linux-based and does SMB, the setup util is Windows-only).

Any good/bad reports out there on working with the TeraStation on a Mac network?

Or is there anything similar out there that doesn't require Windows setup utils? I've done some reading/research on this, but thought I would look for some first-hand reports here...

Thanks.

"Low-cost" and "RAID 5" don't typically appear together. :) I don't have any direct experience with the TeraStation, but its absurdly low price makes me very suspicious. I haven't noticed anything else like it. Using prices from CDW: the 4x160 TeraStation costs $667, while the 4x160 Snap Server 4200 costs $2753 and the 4x160 Iomega 400r costs $3252.

There are lots things you can get with "enterprise" hardware that the TeraStation doesn't have: hot-swapable drives, redundant power supplies, dual ethernet ports, lots of cache RAM for better performance, verified compatibility with backup software, failure notifications via email/pager/cellular, etc. I would simply expect the hardware to be better quality. For example, the TeraStation probably uses the same drives you'd find in a cheap PC, whereas the more expensive stuff should come with drives that were created by their manufacturers for 24x7 operation in a server.

For doing NAS on the cheap, I think there are lots of people who would recommend putting together a Linux box with a low-grade processor, a good power supply, a RAID card and the drives of your choice.

i have no direct experience, but this box seems to get a lot of good word-of-mouth: http://www.infrant.com/

I support both a Terastation and a Snap Server 4200. I didn't set up the Terastation, so I don't know how it would be done on a Mac.

The Snap server is faster, certainly, and has a lot more management and high-end functionality. Support sucks, and is way over-priced. They killed off one of the included backup products in the middle of our support plan and left us high and dry. I will never do business with them again.

Since support on this costs $900/year, and a Terastation costs less, we dropped support and bought another Terastation to do backups nightly. If the Snap server fails, we'll replace it with something else.

The Terastation is good for what it does; simple, basic file sharing. That's it. You get RAID protection and some basic management tools via a web interface. It works and runs without maintenance or reboots.

I just saw a couple of other NAS devices in the same price range/market, but haven't tried them.

Thanks for the feedback. I know I'm not going to get enterprise-level quality at this kind of price, but this is just going to be used for home storage, with a small number of computers accessing. And the price difference is not insignificant for me.

Looks like Buffalo has a "Pro" version of the TeraStation coming out in a few days. It's on their site now, but they haven't announced pricing yet. Will stay tuned for that.

Looking at this from another angle, I could potentially live without the NAS aspect and just share it from a FW attached Mac. In that case, I would still want RAID5, and would want it to be just as quiet as the TeraStation purportedly is. So maybe I need to be on the hunt for a *quiet* RAID enclosure...

Our home "NAS" is actually a Windows server in a small enclosure the same size as the Buffalo. Sacrilege, I know, but it cost about the same as the NAS and gives us the ability to run Windows programs via VNC/RDC if we want.

Unless you want to hug it regularly, a server can very well be in a closet where it can make all the noise it wants ;) .

Another cheap option would be a low-end PC running Linux with netatalk.

For home storage, I don't see the point of RAID 5. Keeping a good set of backups will protect your data much better (RAID doesn't help you when you drag the wrong file to the Trash and empty it) and more cheaply.

My home "NAS" is a Mac Mini, a MiniStack, an IDE drive, and SharePoints to configure it. Cheaper than the TeraStation, works better with Macs, and doubles as an extra computer. It can run Jay Jay the Jet Plane for my four-year-old... can your Snap server do that? :)

Yak makes another good point; nightly backups are generall more useful than RAID, I think.

Ah... but we're talking about more than half a terabyte of music and video here... backup isn't all that feasible. But I don't want to risk losing it, so RAID5 will give me insurance against drive failure, and effectively eliminate the need for backup.

Jay Jay! My 3-yr-old can relate :)

Technically, no form of RAID eliminates the need for backup. As long as your data is 1) all stored in one place, or 2) all accessible to a single system, there are chances that it will be destroyed. An electrical surge or fire could physically destroy the RAID. The RAID could be stolen. A software error, or malicious software, could cause the data to be erased. And while it's unlikely, multiple concurrent drive failures are possible, which would destroy a RAID 5 volume.

RAID 5 is certainly good enough for most people, most of the time. Just don't confuse it for a complete backup method. Effective backup requires another copy of the data be stored in a safe location.

And statistically speaking, RAID 1 is more stable/secure than 5. There's more to go wrong in 5. RAID 1 is less efficient, of course. As noted, if your data is all in one place and all being written concurrently, your chance for loss goes up.

I have three Buffalo Terastation 1GB's, they do work with MAC's although buffalo may not officially "support" them.

These boxes are hard to beat for the price; they also operate as FTP & Print Server and have a gigabit Lan port. Also you can stick your old USB hard drives into the four USB ports and it will use them too!

The web browser options have the following settings:

AppleTalk Protocol
Apple Print Server
AppleTalk Function
AppleShare Network Zone Settings

The default Apple settings are disabled but using the simple web browser interface to set to enable and a quick reboot should sort things out.

As for RAID level's 5 wins over 1 EVERY time, with RAID5 you get faster reads as the reads can be done simultaneously from each drive (subject to a good controller). Of course everyone knows that you can make stats say anything you like, but stats don’t allow for the management element.

I have servers that have been running for 24/7 for 6 years without hard disk failures, my preferred solution for my customers is raid 51 which is where you raid 5 a number of drives and then Raid1 (mirror) the whole raid to another set of drives. Of course each set of drives is on a separate controller and in a separate external storage array. Hot Swap disks are also essential if you really care about your data.

We did have one failure caused by a voltage problem on the backup generator; this took out two disks, a server and a UPS. We lost no data.

I am always wary about software raids, if you want to prove how awful the Micro$oft Windows 2000 raid try this simple test.

1. Get a Server that has the minimum 3 disks needed for Raid5
2. Create your Raid5 across the three drives and add some files.
3. Simulate a power failure or just pull one of the drives out.
4. Reboot the system with the drive restored (the raid starts to rebuild the drive as normal)
5. Now simulate another power failure.
6. Boot up the system which is now corrupt and thinks there are 4 drives in the system.

I repeated this test several times and it failed everytime, I have not tried it on Windows 2003 but I might soon.

Getting back to the Buffalo NAS, they are great, I use two for archiving files (each on a different site) and one as a store for a VPN. My only gripe is that when they fail you have to determine the fault by counting the number of blinks on the front.

If you use Winzip Pro V10 you can schedule a zip of your files and have it FTP your files to the buffalo(s). Not bad for $50!

If you don’t know what RAID is then look at

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardw...pict43125.html

If you want to see the stats then see

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...ts/relRel.html


Check the constraints of these devices at

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/su...p?productid=97

AJ

Buffalo user and happy...

We'ver been using 2 Buffalo Terastations on our peer network for our graphics business and we have been very satisfied with them. They save us countless hours of stopping work and backing up when we just dont have time. We then burn the data to DVD when the opportunity presents itself. They are GIGABIT fast, highly configurable, maintenence free, RAID 5 with 750 actual GIGS available on a terastation (loose some due to internal RAID 5 parity but anyway) , and relatively easy to connect to in mixed Windows/Mac 9.2/OS X environment. It's as if they are advanced severs that are easy to work on for those who have set up networks before --- if you have a clue about networking systems !!!! If you DO NOT have a clue then you may be dissapointed slightly as you may have to learn about TCP/IP settings, workgroups, differences in using protocols per brand of machine, enabling them on peer machines etc...

THe Bufffalos will transfer about 1 GIGabyte in less than a minute on a low traffic gigabit (1000baseT) network. To me, thats adequate for the money.

One recommendation is print the entire manual and READ it ...failure to do that is totally irresponsible especilly when valuable data may be concerned.

In the real world, Windows software RAID works just fine. You wouldn't have a server without battery backup.

Which is another point; put your server on a battery! They are cheap. Hard power loss is a great way to lose data.

Backup
 

I have a network with two terastations- 1 does a complete backup of the other. I have yet to perform this task successfully with the built-in backup utility. Otherwise, they work great and have had no other problems. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong though and Buffalo Tech hasn't helped.

Terastation with Mac: Works great + Question on expanding the RAID 5
 

I have been using my Terastation from my iMac G5 for a few months and it works like a charm. I am not leveraging the 1Gbit though since my G5 is first generation and only offers 10/100, so when I stream a non-compressed DV movie, it can choke a little. My issue now is that I have filled it up, and would like to expand it using an external USB2.0 4 disk enclosure. My Terastation is in RAID 5, and I don't know if I could achieve this and leverage the n-1 factor of the RAID 5 configuration (ie have my external disks part of the RAID 5). It would be cheaper than buying another Terastation, I could buy the 250GB disks as I need them, and I would not lose another whole 250GB, and still see one terastation in my network as a single volume. In short, I would get 2n-1 instead of 2(n-1). Anyone can comment if they have done it, or suggest how I could achieve it? Regards.

rlaborie,
While RAID5 does support expansion (albeit full rebuild), the Terastation does not. Unfortunately, the external drives can only be used for backup of your RAID drives or to individually share folders. I had also hoped for expansion at one time -- alas, it can't happen.

Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV 1.0TB
 

Wow, the ReadyNAS looks like one sweet device only for a few hundred
dollars more than the Terastation. I think I've found my next NAS. The
difference in speed is also quite impressive. I looked through various
reviews on the Terastation Pro and I'm not so impressed, considering you
can't use your own drives and it's not hot swappable. Plus, it goes for
about the price of the ReadyNAS.

Please help me set up!
 

I just got a TeraStation, hoping there would be an easy way to administrate it using a web browser.

How did you set it up? What is the default IP address of this machine? I cannot see it on my network, so I know it does not use DHCP!

Thanks for any help!!
Darren

Filename too long & Invalid characters
 

Hi all!

I have just recently bought a TS 1.0tb and already having problems. It would appear that it does not support certain characters in some of my files, the default format is set to XFS.

I can't seem to find limitations (anyone know?) other than max 2gb file size but have used 'A better file renamer' to remove: ()[],.- characters. Any ideas whether/how I can change the disk format and get rid of these limitations so they are more in-lign with my MacTels? Thanks for any help you can offer as usual.

Many thanks,

Philippe