Buffalo TeraStation III 4-Bay 8 TB (4 X 2 TB) RAID 1U Rack Mountable Network Attached Storage (NAS) - TS-RX8.0TL/R5

Been using NAS's from Buffalo for over 10 years. I've probably bought about 10 of various units from Buffalo Tech for myself and others that I help with IT stuff. Never had the trouble some folks describe. Had two drives go bad in two units after running for a few years. Swapped them out and the RAID rebuilt with no issues. This unit has 2 link-able gigabit ports that make it extremely fast for our backups. Don't be afraid to buy these.

The hard drives in these units do not last long... Service from them manufacturer is great during warranty but after that you are on your own.

Once you get this unit set up and configured properly it seems to be stable and reliable. The documentation is pretty limited. For example, we built this out in a test environment using a slightly different network configuration than it was deployed into. During unpacking for the final deploy, the tiny little Manual/Auto switch on the back was bumped to Auto. There is about one sentence in the documentation that addresses this, but the combination of a different network gateway and the auto switch basically meant the unit would shut itself off constantly and couldn't be connected to even attempt to update the config. Turns out, that auto setting means the unit automatically goes to sleep if it cannot connect to a computer with the NAS software installed, but because the network settings needed to be updated, the unit wouldn't stay awake long enough to be detected. Round and round we went. Finally, we figured out the switch was changed and could make the necessary updates. Once properly config'd, the unit is good quality (albeit VERY loud). There are some options in the software for things that I wouldn't expect to see in a business hardware unit (bit torrent, for example), but those can be disabled easily enough. I would buy it again (but hope I don't have to).

Seems to work good but we had to waste 3 weeks of having server promlems to get 1 that worked. We got 1 and installed it. It took us about a week before we realized it wasn't working properly. So we ordered another one so we could stay running when we sent it back. Got the second 1 and it worked great so sent the first one back for a replacement. Got the third one and it didn't work either. So we had to send it back. Now we are on the fourth one and just got it installed yesterday. It seems to be working properly. Not sure how I feel about all the down time we had with no compensation for our troubles.

Worked great, surprised it included drives.

I bought this unit from another retailer, but they did not have the ability to leave reviews. The unit seems nice and would probably do fine in a home network. The low review is strictly from a business office point of view. This unit was purchased to use in our office and right out of the box there were problems connecting to it. Nowhere in the documentation or product descriptions are you told that the software for set-up does NOT work when the software and device are on different subnets. I had to set up a laptop with the software and an IP that was on the same range as the default for the unit and connect through a 4 port switch. Once the IP was set, I was able to access with software from a machine on the same subnet, but not from a different subnet. I then had trouble getting it to work on the Active Directory due to limitations that the TeraStation III has with "valid" characters that can be used for the password. A search on the Buffalo site showed an update to the firmware that allowed for more flexibility. The firmware did seem to fix the password character set problem (at least for the characters that I was using). This update also must be run from a machine on the same subnet as the device, as it does not give the ability to specify an IP that the machine is located and will not search across subnets.

We own a couple Buffalo rackmount Terastations. We primarily use these for storing documents and data. We have them setup to mirror each other. We have not had any problems with them thus far and one of them we have owned one of them for a couple of years now. I would not expect this to be extremely speedy device and I don't know if I would store database files, or anything else needed for real time applications. If you need real fast you need to look at a SAN device and not a NAS. They work great for backup, they are recognized by our Active Directory Server and they are relatively easy to setup.

I own several of these and every time they crash, I replace them with a Qnap. Have four Qnaps and haven't had one problem with them. The Buffalos are infamous for crashing. If interested, google the E04 error. In fact, Buffalo has had so many problems with this, they are even giving it a new error code. There is even a Wiki on how to get your data off these since they crash so much. Tech support is near nonexistant as well.