Buffalo TeraStation Live Network Storage Server - HS-DH2.0TGL-R5
Buffalo TeraStation Live - Multimedia Storage Server - 2TB, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, SATA, DLNA CERTIFIED

Basic setup was super easy but the options for setting up security are somewhat limited and annoying (you have to use the same user-id and password as you use for Windows XP and you cant create different shares with different access levels to be accessed by the same PC - at least as far as I can work out so far). The speed of copying files to the Terastation seemed slower than other NAS devices I have used, but streaming audio and video files across the network has worked fine. I also think the TS is a bit noisier that other NAS devices I have used, but I have it tucked away in my office, so that is not an issue for me. So basically everything was good if not great, but then one of the 4 drives failed (after 10 days) annoying to say the least. Im in the middle of the process of getting a replacement drive and tech support has been okay so far. I know drives fail and it comes down to probability, but it still makes me question Buffalos QA processes. The good thing is that Raid 5 actually worked properly and I have not lost any data and the unit is still functioning (fingers crossed).
 
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What can I say! Looking for 'cheap storage', RAID5, network ports and under $1,000. Look no further than Buffalo products. We just replaced another Buffalo Box here at work, and the new software is a cinch to setup and create folders, etc.
 
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This is my second Terrastation 2TB unit. I think these units are by far the best value for money NAS boxes available, especially when Buy.com has them on promotion. The RAID 5 configuration provides 1.5TB of available storage (on a 2TB unit). If you want to protect your data against loss, then running this box in RAID 5 is the best choice for efficient use of drive space. After all, backing up 1.5TB isn't an easy job. Network performance is quite good at about 14MB/s both ways (Gbit LAN, without enabling jumbo frames). It runs very quietly and doesn't generate a great deal of heat in the room. The DLNA features works - even iTunes detects it automatically. Excellent product with firmware updates available at manufacturer's web site.
 
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This is a second purchase of the Buffalo Terrastation 2TB for my office. It is a backup of the first. We did a lot of research before we bought this one and we haven't been disappointed. I love that we have redundant drives in case one fails and that we have a network accessible file store. It is really easy to set up and maintain. I love it and highly recommend it.
 
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Price was right, installation was easy, runs very quiet, and just works. I've had this bad boy running in my closet for 9 months now. It seemlessly streams my movies, music, photos, and database to all of my rooms. The only problem is that I have to reboot it occasionally, maybe once every other month or so. Overall, I love it and don't know how I ever lived without it! Actually, the only reason that I'm on buy.com right now is that I'm keeping my eye out for another one as the price falls, or I may grab one of the 4TB's as they come down.
 
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This thing changed my life, no longer need to leave a whole pc on as a file-server. Would be nice if you could set permissions on individual folder, but the ease of administration makes up for that deficiency.
 
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I had read many reviews of this machine prior to purchasing it, and the great majority of them were very favorable, so I went ahead with my purchase. The server was extremely easy to setup. All of my PCs were instantly able to see the shares on it. There are many configuration settings, but the online help did a good job at explaining the ones I didn't understand. I've had this server now for about a month. I copied all of my music files, photos, software installation programs, and ripped DVDs to this thing, and still have a ton of space left. While watching some ripped DVD, I have seen a bit of buffering, but that might have more to do with my wireless network than the server itself. Overall, it has performed admirably. Who would have thought just a few years ago that someone could have a 2TB file server in their own home for a reasonable price! I got this for an unbelievable price at the time, so this was a great purchase for me. Buy.com got this to me within just a few days with free ground shipping as well.
 
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This is the problem with reviews, when every thing is great..not to many reviews. I am really happy with the "Buffalo TeraStation Live" it is really quiet, have to get within inches to hear the terastation. Only one problem, should have gotten the 4 TB!
 
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I've had this Terastation for about a month now. Windows SMB/CIFS mounts work great. No NFS support, though. Tried hacking it to do NFS, and bricked it. Reflashing it brought it right back with no loss of data. Got around the lack of NFS support with a loopback trick that you can read about at the Terastation wiki at terastation.org. The TSLive has an ARM9 cpu, not PPC, so you can't use kernels and modules from the original TS or TSPro, but the TSPro2 and TSLive both share the same ARM9 cpu, so stuff there should be interchangeable. In the default RAID5 configuration, you get about 1.4TB of usable space. With the 1.10/2.07 flash update, it runs a Linux 2.6.16.16 kernel.
 
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I had it setup and in use in ten minutes. It is great for my system backups.
 
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Hooked up easily, identified the network quickly, software installed nicely. It is possible to have minimal networking knowledge and be able to install this. Changing the configuration from RAID 5 to RAID 1 took digging through several menus (that's where the "4" comes from), but was not impossible.
 
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Absolutely super price for a great NAS (On sale at buy.com for less than $800 when I purchased it). Only problem was in the installation of the software as the instructions did not match the actual installation procedures. After several installs and uninstalls I just followed my instincts and got the device set up and working. Has performed flawlessly and is super quiet.
 
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Absolutely super price for a great NAS. Only problem was in the installation of the software as the instructions did not match the actual installation procedures. After several installs and uninstalls I just followed my instincts and got the device set up and working. Has performed flawlessly and is super quiet.
 
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Pros: It has 2TB!!!, Multiple RAID options, Easy to manage web interface, built in print server, Gigabit ethernet, VERY QUITE. Cons: The only thing I dont like about this is the plastic material it is made out of feels flimsy and cheap. For the price I think it should be a little better constucted. Overall: This is a great NAS device for the money.
 
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This was very easy to set up and use. I works incredably well and I was able to use it as a server storage for my small office network without having to spend for a dedicated server.
 
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I got this a few weeks ago to use for movie storage, and it works great! With 2TB of storage you cna load a LOT of movies on it. The really great part is with it connected to my network I am able to watch movies anywhere in the house or office. With a PC connected to my projector it's fantastic for movie night on a 120 screen! No more searching through stacks of DVD's trying to figure out what we want to watch. It's at your fingertips at all times. I actually watch more movies now. I also loaded my music and can stream music to any PC in the house. I would highly recommed this unit -- espically if you can get it on sale as I did!
 
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Have a large home network so many computers are connected to this NAS. Here are a couple observations so far: <P>1. Had a hard time accessing the drive from a Windows XP system at first. When I upgraded the firmware to v1.10, that fixed the intermittent problem and it could be accessed just fine.</P> <P>2. About two weeks after buying the unit, I went to turn it on it it got stuck on the bootup process. The display said "Booting...." and stayed there for over 12 hours. I unplugged it for a couple hours and tried again -- still didn't boot. Tried the emergency mode (sort of like safe mode) and that didn't work either. Took out all the drives and it wouldn't even try booting. But one of the four back in and it still gets stuck. Finally, put all four drives back in and it did boot in emergency mode but it could not be accessed through the built-in web server or from SMB (Windows Shared Folders). Called tech support and discovered if you can ping the drive, you can flash the firmware. He had me flash the firmware again and it began working immediately.</P> <P>3. The tech support guy recommended that you do not turn off the machine. Apparently it counts the number of reboots and after a particular number (I think it's around 8 but not sure), it will test the raid array and that can take up to 8 hours. You cannot access the drive during that time and you cannot bypass the check.</P> <P>4. Used the drive in Raid 5 configuration thinking I would be safe if one of the drives fails. What I didn't anticipate is the entire unit failing. Highly recommend you backup your data regardless of what raid level you decide to use.</P> <P>5. The processor inside must be extremely slow. If I'm transferring files to or from the drive and attempt to access the web site (even through a different computer), it takes a very long time to render the page. While on the subject of the web server that's built in, I believe the login timeout is way too short. There are times I am accessing a page which takes a long time and then click on another button and it has already timed out and requires that I sign back in.</P> <P>6. If you connect an external USB drive to the unit, you can access that drive as one of the shares. However, if you don't format it with the unit, you only have read access and cannot write to the disk. If you format it through the unit, it uses XFS file system and you can read and write but then cannot easily use the drive by plugging it in a USB port on another computer unless you're running a newer build Linux. There appears to be some XFS drivers for Windows but I was unable to get them to work on the USB drives apparently because both the XFS driver and the USB driver conflict with each other. I did not try removing the drive from the case and installing it directly into the computer.</P> <P>7. Extremely slow. Transferring a few gigs of data to the drive can take an hour even with a gigabit connection. To make it worse, if you're doing multiple transfers from a couple computers, this will drastically increase the time. If transferring the same files from one computer to another using the same gigabit connection, it takes just a couple minutes. Going to this drive in particular takes much longer. You would think it would be faster since it's in a quasi-spanned mode using Raid 5. In my opinion, it should be at least 3 times faster but it isn't.</P> <P>8. You can run software directly from this drive but I wouldn't recommend it. It just takes too much time to load the programs.</P> <P>9. The built in fan is quiet but not completely silent.</P> <P>Even with the above observations, I would still like to have a another one of these drives but wouldn't pay the regular price for it. Maybe if it goes on sale, I'd buy another one. I would just use it for raw data storage that isn't accessed very often.
 
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This unit has be solid as a rock I would do it again in a heartbeat its fast and cheap!
 
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I'm very impressed with this little unit. Normally, putting a file server on a network requires someone who knows what they are doing to put the system together. They have to build the system, configure the software, and put the file server on your network. Here's how this install worked for me, it showed a cartoon illustration of a guy plugging in the power cord, and plugging the nework cable into the router. I did this, and then it said to simply turn it on. Couldn't be that easy, right? It was that easy! Right away it found itself a network IP address, then it joined a workgroup. It has a very easy to use GUI interface, and before long I had the drive formated, and password protected. As far as a file server is concerned, this is not an enterprise system. It's kinda like File Server Lite. But, it's perfect for a small business to medium sized business or home a network. The systems is set to RAID 5 by default which means that you will get 1.5 terabytes of storage (not 2 terrabyes). It also means that if one drive crashes you can use the remaining 3 drives to rebuild a new forth drive once installed. If you are good about backing up this drive you can configure a RAID 0, and getting faster read and write times and a full 2.0 terrabytes. This is a great little device. I can see people who have enterprise network servers having this on their desk as well for extra storage protection. All I can say is that I am addicted, and want another one!
 
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An "admin" would have a proper server created & use that server to then create a DFS (Distributed File System) which would then regulate the shares based upon group & user credentials. Just because you're running a home network & have no experience with running a proper server, doesn't mean Buffalo should have created the NAS as a proper server. NAS is what it is... network attached storage. You can disallow direct access to the device & route all traffic through the server with DFS. Google.com is your friend if you can read.
 
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I purchased the 2 TB terastation in order to preserve photos and videos from my wife's small photography business. We had just lost a hard drive and the resulting photoshopped images. The product arrived very quickly, even with the free shipping. My thoughts on the performance of the unit: 1) It is silent. Very silent. 2) The LEDs on front can be dimmed so that they virtually invisible. 3) I plugged it into a port on my wireless router, ran the set up disk on my laptop and immediately had wireless access to the drives. It has operated without a hickup for about two weeks so far. 4) The password protection scheme for shared folders is a little flaky. I finally gave up and just left the folders open to anyone on our secure wireless LAN. I would buy it again but would really like a better (more relaible) user access control sheme.
 
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The system was easy to setup right out of the box and delivered respectable performance. This is a good value drive for thoese needing a large amount of drive storage as a media server or other backup device. Highly recommend.
 
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I have a large heterogeneous home network (Mac, Windows, Linux, a couple laptops, Tivos and a SONOS sound system). I outgrew my homegrown 1TB Linux NAS and bought the 2TB Terastation Live when it came out. From a performance perspective, the system works well, both in reading and writing large audio and video files. <br><br>Unfortunately, Buffalo limited their system in one egregious way: they do not allow the Admin to create nested file shares. <br><br>For example, if using it in a corporate environment, an Admin might create the following shares: <ul><li>\abc.com <li>\abc.com\Accounting <li>\abc.com\Finance <li>\abc.com\Marketing </ul><br>This would allow the Admin to mount \abc.com, and access all departments through one share, but use the (well-written) user and group management to restrict Marketing personnel to the \abc.com\Marketing folder. <br><br>This is not the case. When creating a share, an admin can only create shares at the root level, which means that, in order to separate data by department, the Admin must create separate root shares. This means that the same Admin (who can access all of the data) must mount each of the segments separately to gain a holistic view, or to access all of the data and run aggregate reports, etc. <br><br>This issue also applies in a home network environment when a user wishes to gain a holistic view of his/her data from one share on a single machine, but either share a single folder for use by roommates, or restrict a search scope for an external player (Tivo, SONOS). I don't want to access every media file on the NAS - just those in a specific \data\Media\Audio or \data\Media\Video folder. <br><br>At this time, they have no intention of adding this [seemingly basic] functionality, blaming it on the client applications (since you can mount a folder within a share in Windows, other operating systems be danged).
 
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