By Sarah DavisPosted Wednesday 9th April 2008 12:30 GMT
I hope it's speed is better than their HD-HG300LAN i bought a few years ago. For a Gignet device it was painfully slow at 12Mb/sec, and Buffalo's support was as useful as a mountain duck. Any USB HD is faster.
Given that it's 1TB RAIDed across two disks, I can only assume they're configured in RAID-0 (The zero stands for how much data you can get back if one of the disks fails, I believe). In my experience, 2.5'' drives seem to have a higher failure rate than 3.5'' drives as it is. Never mind doubling that chance of failure with RAID-0.
It's cute and all that, but I wouldn't trust it with anything but the most trivial data. And even then I'd be cautious!
I suppose it's an impressive racket though: sell a single midrange disk + $5.00 worth of plastic and + a $2.00 chip for twice or thrice the price of a same size top range disk, and provide performance worse than a low end disk. Leaves lots of performance headroom for marketing if the punters ever catch on...
I've yet to see a small NAS box that has decent speed. Even some 4 & 5 disk RAID NAS boxes can't top 25 MB/s. The vendors need to put more muscle into the LAN interface and on board CPU.
"Tiny" NAS boxes have been around for a while. Tiny being how big the NAS hardware is minus the drive. So making them this small is hardly hard.
You are going to pay an excessive premium for this, on an item which already has a high markup. You do with all NAS boxes, get a generic one and put your own drives in.
The "el cheapo" I got from somewhere recently, is exactly the same firmware wise as a larger name manufacturer, and it cost me loads less. Win.
500GB RAID 1 mirror, or 1TB lose all your data RAID 0? #
By Anonymous CowardPosted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:55 GMT
These seem like overpriced, low-performing boxes and don't sound too appealing:
1. 1TB in RAID 0 sounds ideal for losing all your data, or
2. 500GB in RAID 1 using a mirror to protect your data
If you know how to use a screwdriver then you could build your own NAS, get much, much larger capacity, and get bullet-proof data integrity thrown in for free:
Think I quite agree with most peeps here when they say that historically, the 2.5 drives are pretty pants when it comes down to durability. Then again, having a couple of these knocking around: one with MP3s, one with movies, and one with pics on them would be pretty nice for me!
... but let's hope they work and are reasonably priced..
By Hywel ThomasPosted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:39 GMT
I don't really see the point of this, unless it can run off USB. Then it'll be a fairly fast big chunk of storage to carry around with a laptop. If it needs it's own power, then bigger cheaper drives seem to be a better option. Or the Lacie little big disk that I have my eye on for portability (RAID 0, but currently only 400GB 7200 or 500GB 5400, and bloody expensive :()
..by Dlink. Has 2 empty SATA slots, runs linux inside, can be tweak, has several RAID options, and has a Gigabit interface...and yes, it runs fast at that interface level. Check Toms Hardware (I think) for a full review
By Nick CollingridgePosted Wednesday 9th April 2008 23:02 GMT
What's the point of Appletalk support if there's no AFP - or is that what you meant? If they're really serious about working optimally with Macs they should be offering AFP 3.0 or greater and Bonjour support for easy discovery. Appletalk is pretty much totally redundant nowadays.
I have a Buffalo Terastation NAS and the supposed "gigabit" ethernet is a joke. It's hardly faster runing at 1 Gig than at 100 mbps. A fast interface doesn't mean fast data transfer rates.
By Scott MckenziePosted Thursday 10th April 2008 08:49 GMT
I've always found the Linkstations to be very quick actually... certainly a significant improvement over the Western Digital MyBook World Edition II i recently bought, that too has RAID built in, but running it in mirrored config it registered <10Mbps data transfer rate over a wired connection!!!
The Time Capsule i now have, whilst losing out on RAID is supremely quick....
Comments on: Buffalo makes big noise over tiny terabyte NAS box
Mountain Duck #
By Sarah Davis Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 12:30 GMT
RAID or not to RAID #
By Stuart Halliday Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 12:57 GMT
1TB RAID? #
By Tom Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:00 GMT
I'm with Sarah #
By E Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:14 GMT
Not much different... #
By Simon Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:34 GMT
Perfect Backup Solution?? #
By Anonymous Coward Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:36 GMT
@ E #
By Parax Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:44 GMT
500GB RAID 1 mirror, or 1TB lose all your data RAID 0? #
By Anonymous Coward Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 13:55 GMT
DLNA #
By Steve Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 14:18 GMT
DLNA #
By Alex Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 16:14 GMT
No NFS? #
By Anonymous Coward Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 16:30 GMT
Will it run without a wall wart ? #
By Hywel Thomas Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:39 GMT
DNS-323 #
By Gaz Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 20:44 GMT
Appletalk? #
By Nick Collingridge Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 23:02 GMT
Real gigabit or just fantasy? #
By Nick Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 07:56 GMT
Speed #
By Scott Mckenzie Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 08:49 GMT