Buffalo Technology TeraStation Live 2.0TB review

Buffalo's TeraStation Live has a massive capacity of 2TB, or around 2,000GB, but a low cost of just 29p per gigabyte. It houses four 500GB hard disks that can be configured as one of four types of RAID.

As a RAID 0 array - where files are broken up across all disks - the full 2TB of storage space is available, but if any one disk should fail all your data will be lost. Configured as a RAID 5 array, the TeraStation will provide around 1.5TB of usable space, as a disk's worth of storage is used for data protection. If one disk should fail then all your data would still be safe.

Alternatively, the TeraStation can be configured as a pair of independent RAID 1 arrays. Each RAID 1 array consists of two 500GB disks with the contents of one disk mirrored on the other so that if one fails, all your data will be preserved. Each array would provide only 500GB of space, though. When configured as a RAID 10 array, the TeraStation mirrors the contents of one RAID 1 array on the other, providing another layer of protection should a disk fail.

As our results below show, the TeraStation is quick at copying large files but slow transferring small files when configured as RAID 0. This pattern repeated itself, no matter what the RAID type. As a RAID 5 array, the TeraStation copied large files at 15.1MB/s and small files at 1.3MB/s. As a RAID 1 array, it managed 11.8MB/s and 1.7MB/s, and as a RAID 10 array, 14.5MB/s and 1.5MB/s.

All the hard disks are mounted in removable trays so they can be easily replaced in the event of disk failure, while a lockable front panel will prevent casual thieves from stealing a disk. An LCD screen displays useful information such as the TeraStation's current IP address and RAID configuration. Setup is straightforward thanks to the clean web configuration interface, although the screen for creating different groups of users with differing levels of access to certain folders is poorly organised and confusing.

We had no trouble using the TeraStation to share a USB laser printer and the contents of a USB flash drive over the network. The TeraStation is also one the few NAS devices we've seen with an iTunes server that actually works. We could play back music - even DRM-protected tracks bought from Apple's iTunes Store - using the latest version of iTunes.

However, being able to access all your files from any computer is of little use if your NAS is so slow that you have to leave file transfers running overnight. While the TeraStation is well designed with many useful features, we found that its performance left us wanting more.

Author: Alan Lu