Buffalo announces the
TeraStation
Buffalo TeraStation
The product: Buffalo's new TeraStation takes storage and backup to a new level. Digital music, photos, and especially video can take up gobs of storage space, and Buffalo's new TeraStation meets the growing need with a full terabyte of disk space. In addition to offering oodles of storage, the TeraStation is also a highly efficient backup solution that supports disk mirroring and, better yet, RAID 5, which converts the unit's four integrated hard drives into a single redundant disk array. RAID 5 combines the advantages of fast disk performance with a backup fail-safe: should one of the TeraStation's disk drives fail, you can simply replace it with a new empty disk and recover all the data in the array. Other new features and key specs include:

• Gigabit Ethernet port
• Supports four operational modes, including Standard, Spanning, Mirroring, and RAID 5
• Integrated print server
• Four USB ports for added external hard drive expansion.

The price: Buffalo plans to have the TeraStation on store shelves sometime in February. Its estimated street price is $999.

The prospects: Storage and backup products aren't as sexy as iPods, digital cameras, or camcorders, but the more your entertainment and work takes a digital form, the more you will need a place to put it and a way to protect it. Buffalo's solution is pricey, but it's also a very convenient one-stop shop for backup and recovery. We think the mass storage product will have its place in the digital homes of the future.

By Allen Fear, senior editor, CNET Reviews