Price: Rs 60,000 (2 yrs warranty) |
Key Specs: Gb LAN support, 4 modes, USB expansion, Inbuilt FTP & Print server |
Contact: Nexgen Networks, Delhi . Tel: 30888825. Email id: buffalo@nexgennetworks.co.in, QS# E34 or SMS 130334 to 9811800601 |
This is a NAS device for SMEs, which has a Gbe interface
and its storage can be configured in various modes. The modes include standard,
mirroring and parity. In the standard mode each 250 GB drive works individually
but in the spanning mode the drives are grouped to have 1TB of combined space.
You will be able to use the entire space and allocate it to different users. But
in these modes there is no data protection and you can't recover data if
anything happens to one drive. Mirroring and the parity modes are more secure
though you have to sacrifice a large fraction of total space for the data
protection. It took more than 4 hours for completing the parity structure of 1GB
of data in parity mode. In both cases if any one of the drives get damaged then
you can immediately replace them and the data can be recovered. It has a privacy
feature for the shared folder access along with the read and write provision.
The drive can either be mapped or accessed through the browser. The shared
folder space can be easily managed by allotting it the name, space, OS supports,
backup password, etc. The TeraStation can be synchronized with the UPS to
prevent the data loss due to power failures. To actually test the performance we
removed and formatted one of the drives. The TeraStation detected the RAID error
smoothly. Instead of the error in RAID array you will still be able retrieve the
data. The error was removed through the restructure option in the administrative
section. The restructuring process of the same data also took more than couple
of hours to complete. We feel that the data transfer rate would have been much
better with the SATA drives instead of PATA drives. The casing is solidly built
but does not provide tool free access. As well as the drives are not hot
swappable.
Bottom Line:
Overall a good storage
option for SMEs.