Buffalo DriveSation Duo 2TB USB 3.0 review

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Verdict:

It’s very fast and supports RAID for data protection, but a NAS would be a better alternative for anyone with more than one computer.

Review Date: 10 Mar 2011

Price when reviewed: £168

Supplier: http://www.lambda-tek.com

Reviewed By: Tom Morgan

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

External hard disks are great for expanding the capacity of any PC or laptop, but if it fails you will lose all your data. Buffalo’s DriveStation Duo aims to solve this problem by including a second 3.5in drive bay and RAID support, ensuring your documents remain safe even if one of the disks fails. File transfers should also be fairly rapid thanks to USB3 connectivity, assuming you have matching ports on your PC.

The two pre-installed 1TB hard disks aren’t hot-swappable, but can be replaced easily in the event of a disk failure. To exchange one or both disks you simply need to remove the front panel and slot a new one in its place. Power and status LEDs indicate whether a disk is working correctly or if there is a problem. It’s relatively straightforward to configure the two disks in either RAID 1 mode for data redundancy or RAID 0 for increased performance using the included software.

A fairly comprehensive application suite is supplied with the unit; the highlight is Buffalo Backup, a simple utility that can create copies of all your hard disks with just a few clicks. The SecureLock program can encrypt any content saved to the DriveStation, but we would hardly consider it essential for everyday use. We were also surprised to find a RAMdisk utility on the disc - it could be useful if you edit high definition video thanks to its lightning fast transfer speeds.

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