Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN

If you just need a simple network-attached storage (NAS) system (like DROBO 5DT ) for file backups for your small business, then the Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN ($499.99) is worth considering. The TeraStation 5200DN$576.49 at Amazon comes preconfigured with two 1TB drives mirrored for safety, is easy to set up and administer, and comes at a fair price.

Design and Features
The TeraStation 5200DN is built into a black, metal case measuring 6.7 by 6.7 by 9.1 inches (HWD). The top third of the front panel features a LCD that shows information like the NAS's IP address, the status of its drives, and whether the USB ports are in use. The rest of the front panel is a lockable door for access to the drives. Instead of locking each drive sled individually, like the QNAP TVS-463Best Price at Amazon, the door protects both drives. It gives you easy access to the drives when you need to replace one or both, but unfortunately, you can't leave the door unlocked; the key remains captive until you lock the door again. It won't keep out a determined thief for long, but it's more secure than consumer-oriented boxes like the Netgear ReadyNAS 202Best Price at Amazon.

The back panel has a good selection of ports, including two Gigabit Ethernet ports (for failover protection or link aggregation), two USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports. You can connect Ethernet port to your company's LAN, or connect it via iSCSI if you need an isolated network with a server or a workstation. You can hook up a USB flash drive, an external hard drive, or an SSD to the USB ports in the rear, and back up your data to the NAS, but it's less convenient than competitors that have a USB backup port on their front panel, like the Editors' Choice Western Digital My Cloud DL4100Best Priceat Amazon. There's also a serial port for connecting a UPS, so you can set the TeraStation 5200DN to shut down properly (with all of your data and system kept safe) if you lose power in the office. The NAS uses a standard three-pronged power cord, so you won't have to find a spot for a power brick, like on the Seagate NAS 2-BayBest Price at Amazon or the QNAP TS-251$249.00 at Amazon.

Buffalo Technology sells the TeraStation 5200DN with hard drives installed, unlike other NAS that are sold diskless. Our review unit has two 1TB hard drives (for a total of 2TB), formatted and configured in a RAID 1 array for data redundancy, leaving 900GB of free space. That data is protected and usable in case one of the drives fails. If that happens, you can then replace the failed drive with an identical hot-swappable SATA drive. The NAS also comes in a 4TB version for $549.99 and an 8TB model for $699.99. Like our 2TB version, they are also set for RAID 1 out of the box, so they actually back up 2TB and 4TB of data, respectively. You can, of course, reconfigure the NAS to access the full capacity of the drives, but you would be doing so at the expense of the RAID 1 safety net.

Apple OS X and Windows clients can connect to the NAS natively. For backup, you can use either the included NovaBackup software for Windows (10 client licenses are included), or use Apple's Time Machine on Macs to back up your data everyday over the LAN. Connecting to the NAS over the LAN is easy since it's already set up to work out of the box.

A CD included in the box lets you install Buffalo's NAS Navigator2 admin console software on your Mac or Windows PC. The console software lets you check the NAS status, including drive capacity, internal temperatures, and CPU utilization. You can also set up password-protected shares and administer to users locally or remotely. Other functions in the console control the FTP, WebAccess, a DLNA server, an iTunes server, a Squeezebox server, a print server (USB printers connected to the NAS), a local web server, and a MySQL server. You can set up a BitTorrent app, an antivirus app, and surveillance cameras running on the NAS as well. One nice feature in the software is its Easy mode, for use in a SOHO environment where you may not have a regular IT person (or where you are the IT person). It guides you through common settings, like network status, drive configuration, and setting up shares.

You'll primarily be backing up your PCs and Macs to the NAS, but you can also set up a second TeraStation 5200DN on your network to back up the first one or even take over in case of catastrophic failure. Other IT-friendly features include Amazon S3 cloud storage backup (you'll need an Amazon business account to use it) if your company mandates off-site backups. The NAS comes with a three-year warranty.

Performance and Conclusion
The TeraStation 5200DN has an Intel Atom D2550 processor and 2GB of system memory. To test throughput, I copied a 4.9GB folder containing thousands of text, music, photo, Office, and video files over both Gigabit Ethernet wired and 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networks. The TeraStation 5200DN was able to write our test folder at a speed of 65MBps and read it at 71MBps through Ethernet, and a much slower 13MBps write and 14MBps read speeds over Wi-Fi. That's not too bad, although the QNAP TVS-463 was measurably faster at 79MBps write and 86MBps read over Ethernet and 21MBps write and 23MBps read over Wi-Fi in our tests.

As a simple plug-and-play office NAS, the Buffalo TeraStation 5200DN does what you need it to do, which is serve files quickly over your network to your PC and mobile clients. It has some added physical security with a locking access door, a front-panel LCD that serves up a lot of information, and it's relatively easy to administer even if you're a novice. It has a lot less storage than the 24TB of the Western Digital My Cloud DL4100, but then again it is a lot less expensive. The Western Digital DL4100 remains our top pick for SMB NAS devices, thanks to more redundant features like failover power capabilities, a front-mounted USB port, and above all its much larger storage capacity. However, if you have simpler needs, like backing up only two or three PC or Mac clients, then the TeraStation 5200DN is a good alternative at less than a third of the price.