Anyone used harddrives by Buffalo?

squizza

squizza

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I'm wanting to get some external harddrives by brand Buffalo.

Any reviews/recommendations gratefully received

Kind regards

Sarah

P.s Will I be able to format them to work on mac and PC?
 
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I have a few customers using them, 2 sites with NAS drives one of which uses an external USB drive connected to the NAS for backup purposes. They have been in place for about 2 years and no complaints in use 24/7
 
Yes, i have three. 1 x 750GB, 1 x 180GB and one 1 x 1TB NAS. I can't fault them at all.
 
I have had an external Buffalo 1TB for over a year. No issues to report.

Formatting - depends what you want/need to do.

Probably best to partition the disk first the Mac - you can create two or more separate DOS (FAT32) and HFS+ (Mac) partitions. You can then use a PC to change the DOS FAT32 volume to NTFS if you require that.

The Mac will read the DOS volume OK, the PC almost certainly won't read the Mac one, so for Mac only stuff (such as a Time Machine backup) probably best to put it on the HFS+ volume and for files you need to share between the Mac and PC, put on the DOS volume.
 
Hi Sarah

Have been using Buffalo products for years in our design studio. At present I have the Drivestation Duo (2 x 1TB) I don't use RAID but back up all my LR3 Catalogues and original images on one 1TB drive and then use Chronosync to copy to other 1TB drive. It is almost silent in operation too, which is a bonus. All been working fine for nearly 18 months.

BT have the product in stock here http://www.shop.bt.com/products/buffalo-2-0tb-drivestation-duo-usb-5CPM.html

There are other storeage solutions have a look at their site http://www.buffalo-technology.com/products/external-drives/drivestation/

Let me know if you need any further info.

Geoff
 
Do we hear "thank you" :shrug:
 
geoffd70 said:
Do we hear "thank you" :shrug:
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Have you got nothing better to do than chase threads?

For the record I have a life and am not on here 24/7 to check my threads.

And for the record I am very grateful for help that is given on any of my threads.
 
TTK said:
I'v just got this one>http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152214 and it is a cracking bit of kit, well pleased..;)
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Looks great although I am concerned about it possibly dying on me - I bought two 500gb ones to back one up on the other, but losing 1TB of stuff scares me :D

I went for the buffalo ministations 500gb with shock protection. Just waiting for them to arrive.
 
squizza said:
Looks great although I am concerned about it possibly dying on me - I bought two 500gb ones to back one up on the other, but losing 1TB of stuff scares me :D
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TBH, with almost any external drive from any particular manufacturer, you're buying an external case, interfaces (USB, etc) power supply and cooling where necessary. With some products (La Cie spring to mind) you may be paying a premium for aesthetics.

The internal drive mechanisms inside them are liable to be from a limited range of other manufacturers such as Hitachi, Western Digital or Seagate.

If the something in the external case fails, you can always fish out the drive and put it into another. If the drive mechanism itself fails, then you're really in trouble if you don't have backup. A poorly designed case may make some contribution to a drive mechanism failure, but it's largely the drive itself (and an element of blind luck) that will determine the probability of a total wipe-out of your data.

Unfortunately, in many/most cases it will be difficult to discover what exactly you're getting inside before you buy an external drive.
 
squizza said:
Have you got nothing better to do than chase threads?
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Yes Thanks - I'll concentrate on more grateful and less rude members in future

squizza said:
For the record I have a life and am not on here 24/7 to check my threads.
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I have a life too but it doesn't hurt nor take a few seconds to acknowledge those members who go out of their way to help does it

squizza said:
And for the record I am very grateful for help that is given on any of my threads.
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That's extremely magnanimous of you :wave:
 
Musicman said:
TBH, with almost any external drive from any particular manufacturer, you're buying an external case, interfaces (USB, etc) power supply and cooling where necessary. With some products (La Cie spring to mind) you may be paying a premium for aesthetics.

The internal drive mechanisms inside them are liable to be from a limited range of other manufacturers such as Hitachi, Western Digital or Seagate.

If the something in the external case fails, you can always fish out the drive and put it into another. If the drive mechanism itself fails, then you're really in trouble if you don't have backup. A poorly designed case may make some contribution to a drive mechanism failure, but it's largely the drive itself (and an element of blind luck) that will determine the probability of a total wipe-out of your data.

Unfortunately, in many/most cases it will be difficult to discover what exactly you're getting inside before you buy an external drive.
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Fair point :D I suppose I've been scared off the 1TB ones as my Seagate one died after 6 months of use and I lost everything. Stupidly didn't have that backed up on another, and seagate refused to do image/file recovery.
 
geoffd70 said:
Yes Thanks - I'll concentrate on more grateful and less rude members in future

I have a life too but it doesn't hurt nor take a few seconds to acknowledge those members who go out of their way to help does it

That's extremely magnanimous of you :wave:
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The only person that was rude in this thread was you. As squizza hadn't been on to read the thread and thank anyone there was absolutely no need for your post.
 
geoffd70 said:
Yes Thanks - I'll concentrate on more grateful and less rude members in future



I have a life too but it doesn't hurt nor take a few seconds to acknowledge those members who go out of their way to help does it



That's extremely magnanimous of you :wave:
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:cuckoo::cuckoo::cuckoo::cuckoo::cuckoo:
 
I like Buffalo drives, have used the NAS and USB versions very happily. The NAS in particular seems very easy to work with.
 
I've personally had three now, first failed after a couple of days which was replaced, this one failed about 3 weeks out of warranty and my third one failed 2 days ago after about 8 months. :gag:
We have an 8Tb Terastation NAS at work which has had no problems at all.
Purely down to luck I think.
 
erg121 said:
I've personally had three now, first failed after a couple of days which was replaced, this one failed about 3 weeks out of warranty and my third one failed 2 days ago after about 8 months. :gag:
We have an 8Tb Terastation NAS at work which has had no problems at all.
Purely down to luck I think.
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Oh no! :( I suppose, like said before by another poster, all harddrives have a chance of breaking. The only one I've had no problems with (touch wood) is my Lacie, but thats full.

At least I've bought two, one to back the other onto, if something does happen then I have at least one other!

Hardrives are a pain the the butt!
 
All hard drives will fail eventually. It's just a question of how long they take.

squizza said:
The only one I've had no problems with (touch wood) is my Lacie, but thats full.
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Heh. The two external drives I've owned that have failed in use in the last 20 years have both been La Cies :)

I've had a few internal ones go along the way too.
 
Sarah. May also be worth looking at solid-state drives - you pay a premium but they have no moving parts and therefore less likely to fail.
 
backup + RAID should normally be a good enough solution unless you're getting into high-availability computing.

A decent backup strategy will do to secure data for most people. RAID is less essential, but i makes it easier to keep going without interruption when something goes wrong.

Even if you go solid state, which is expensive, you'll want a backup system of some kind, even if it's just copying everything to another HD.

Accept that failures will happen. Plan for them. Carry on and don't worry.
 
I just bought a Synology 4 bay NAS (410). Learning how to use it now :)

I have a Buffalo 1Tb case and it works fine. I also now have 13 other hard drives!!

2 Samsung F3 1Tb (in the NAS) - More to add
A few Maxtor internal drives 2 x 200Gb, 1x 250Gb, 1x 300Gb
A seagate 400Gb ext drive and 2x seagate 500Gb ext drives
1 Lacie 200Gb ext
1 x 160Gb WD drive.

So I used pretty much any drive - there really is very little in it these days regards quality. All work wellalthough they are all liable to failure at any time! If you buy a drive, best to buy in pairs and make sure you have at least 1x backup.

I'm trying to reduce the number of drives a bit by using the NAS so I have 2x 1Tb drives there just now and am almost ready to add the data which will free up a 1Tb drive. (RAID + Backup is my preferred solution).
 
just one point if youre formatting the drive as FAT32 is that the maximum file size a single item can be is 4GB, so if youve got some large videos for example it may not work for you.

alternatively you can get apps that allow NTFS to be written to by OSX and apps that allow windows to read/write to HFS.

geoffd70 said:
Yes Thanks - I'll concentrate on more grateful and less rude members in future
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i could think of a few rude words to describe your attitude to be honest..
 
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