Buffalo Technology just posted a press release that I felt I had to share. It contains some interesting notions about storage systems. In case you never heard of Buffalo: they are “a global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking, network and direct attached storage solutions”.
For a global leader in storage solutions, I’m a bit surprised to hear that a disk failure is an “unlikely event”. If disk failure is so unlikely, why are we all spending so much money on RAID controllers, and inventing new technologies like RAID-6 and RAID-TP to protect against multiple drive failures?
Another nice feature the TeraStation III Rackmount is supposed to offer is “unbeatable redundancy”. Apparently Buffalo thinks RAID-5 support and hot-swappable disks are enough to offer just that; there is no word at all about other reduncancy, such as dual RAID controllers, or even dual power supplies.
The last thing that really made this press release stand out from those of their competitors was the lack of “additional reading”. The product is supposed to be available in late August, but there is no mention of it anywhere on their website apart from the press release. No data sheets. No product images. No “coming soon” page. Nothing.
Anyway, the good news is that the unit won’t be too expensive; it starts at $1,299.99 for a 2TB version (TS-RX2.0TL/R5), and prices go up to $2,999.99 for the 8TB model (TS-RX8.0TL/R5). Assuming all models use the same basic hardware, it might be cheaper to buy the 2TB model and replace the disks; four 2TB SATA disks will cost far less than the $1.700 Buffalo charges you for the upgrade. Another nice feature is the spin-down feature that idles drives when they are not in use. More product information will hopefully appear on this page soon.
Buffalo Terastation III - non-rackmount
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