The Terastation III draws 14.3W during sleep, down from the standard 40.4W, which is put to shame by some Synology, Thecus and Netgear Nas boxes that draw just half a watt during their sleep modes. We also found the Terastation III’s internal clock, which the sleep timer uses, to be rather buggy. Every time the Terastation awoke or restarted, the time moved forward by several hours.
28 hour clock anyone? It'll make you younger
However, leave it on automatic time – linked to a time server – and this issue is resolved as the internal clock is kept updated. If like us, you set the time manually or simply selected 'use local time' – where the time is grabbed from your PC – then the time shoots forwards a few hours after a restart. Stranger still is the timer's 28 hour clock. Presumably, if you select 27:45 it'll actually turn off the following day at 3:45am or perhaps the setting will just be ignored altogether. It's yet another weirdness surrounding the TeraStation III's clock.
Time out: use a network time server until a firmware fix appears
If the TeraStation III spends 12 hours awake and 12 hours asleep, you’re looking at running costs of £26 per year, which is less than the Promise NS4600 and more than Nas boxes with a more effective sleep mode. Running costs are peanuts to the £700 price tag though, which seems a lot compared to most four bay Nas drives. But if you need a Nas to connect to two networks and want a secure FTP server, Buffalo’s got the goods.
Verdict
The Terastation III’s price tag is a step above most other Nas boxes, but its features are a step above too. While the lack of eSata interfacing seems a bit remiss, the SFTP support, dual Lan ports and comprehensive applications for both Mac and PC, suggest this Buffalo has enough beef for power users to chew upon. ®
More NAS Reviews...
Promise Smartstor NS4600 |
Western Digital Sharespace |
Cisco Linksys Media Hub |
EZY Technologies MyXerver MX3600 |
Buffalo Terastation III
COMMENTS
Is it still flawed?
The TS2's were fundamentally flawed in that they striped their own operating system to the drives. So if a drive failed then you needed to boot back into "safe mode" sans any patches you needed to get it to work on your network. Ive had *nothing* but trouble from our TS2 having corrupted OS following power outages (the drive have never failed) as you cannot get them to work properly on UPS's.
Personally I would go for a dedicated PC with linux software RAID on it (as a previous poster suggested) as they are far more flexible in a small office environment. If you are a home user then spend your money on a far cheaper raidsonic unit.
6.3kg?
Its a NAS for schoolgirls....
The old 7 bay CD jukebox enclosure in which I intend to build my NAS weighs 14kg sans drives....pretty sure its bullet-proof.
What I wanna know....
So, does this latest Buffalo product have the same annoying file name/path length restriction as earlier products?
Spin Alert!
Quote Buffalo:
"Absolutely not, we use software RAID controllers to constantly synchronise and monitor the array when RAID 5 is enabled.
"When configuring RAID 5, either on a server or a dedicated NAS product there is a lengthy synchronisation check that takes place to make sure everything is working correctly, you can even schedule this check to happen on our product every week if you so wish."
What does that actually mean? That they don't use ECC, but that you can check for inconsistent checksums a week after the corruption is irreversible? That's worthy of "Yes, minister"!
Or perhaps what they mean is, they use a hardware RAID controller, so that a RAM error in the memory attached to the network-facing CPU can't affect RAID-5 XOR calculations, but can only corrupt the data sent to and fro on the network without any sign of trouble. That's supposed to be better?
My question stands. Do they use ECC RAM -- for the network-facing CPU and even more critically, for the RAM built in to the RAID controller. No ECC, no warning that what was written into the RAM is not what came out, so one can suffer creeping corruption without any explicit hardware errors.
My own opinion of hardware RAID controllers is very jaundiced. I've had nothing but grief over the years from various Adaptec and 3Ware 4 or 8 disk offerings. Of course, past experience may not generalize to current products. Another nasty FAIL with such beasts -- if (when!) the controller dies, you may find that it is impossible to reconstruct the array by connecting the disks to a new controller (new model because the one you have is obsolete, or even same obsolete model with a new firmware revision). In contrast, with up-to-date Linux software RAID, you just attach the disks to a new motherboard and everything auto-assembles and works. Combine this with the advanced mdraid features like resizing and reshaping, and I'll go for Linux-based software RAID every time.
And don't get me started on fake RAID controllers - pathetic one-function chips that calculate XORs at a small fraction of the speed of the cheapest Athlon you can buy! They might have been a good idea when state-of-the-art was a 100MHz i486. They're snake oil today.
(Enterprise-class hardware RAID and NAS is a different kettle of fish - I'm flaming about NAS boxes that cost a couple of grand tops here.)
@ Cameron, Andy, Steve & Nigel
@ Cameron Colley: the TeraStation III, like most Nas boxes I've tested, doesn't come with any Linux software on the CD (probably something to do with that tiny desktop market share Linux has). Linux file shares are supported via NFS on the TeraStation III though.
@ Andy Turner: Many Nas boxes will do what you want. The Promise NS4600, recently reviewed on the Reg, calls it 'replication' and the TeraStation III calls it a 'distributed file system'.
@ Steven R: FTP is often very quick, but doesn't reflect how most users use a Nas (I think!)
@ Nigel 11: The TeraStation III doesn't have ECC Ram. When asked whether this will increase the likelihood of Raid 5 errors, Buffalo responds:
"Absolutely not, we use software RAID controllers to constantly synchronise and monitor the array when RAID 5 is enabled.
When configuring RAID 5, either on a server or a dedicated NAS product there is a lengthy synchronisation check that takes place to make sure everything is working correctly, you can even schedule this check to happen on our product every week if you so wish."
