Buffalo Terastation Network Attached Storage Review

This is the first time Ive ever taken the time to write a review, but Im here to buy yet another one of these units, and I felt compelled to respond to a couple of the negative reviews here. First off, this is the Terastation III, not the Pro as referenced in another review. Additionally, I own a medium sized video and animation facility, with up to 7 artists accessing one of our three Terastation IIIs at all times for video, animation, and rendering, and this unit IS compatible with Apple OS. Configuration is done via a web browser, not a PC. Were cross platform here, and PC vs. Mac has nothing to do with this unit. As for Mac, since it doesnt use drive lettering, you do have to know how to set it up as a server, by IP address, in MAC OS. PC is much easier in terms of mapping the drive, but either way it works fine regardless of platform. These drives are fast, particularly if you set up port trunking, which is a very high end feature for a NAS in this price range. By using port trunking (which uses 2 network ports to effectively double the network connection speed), we have been able to eliminate several of our NAS units in favor of just a few Terastation IIIs. Multiple users can access the drive simultaneously with no problems. As for reliability, we did have one DOA unit, which Amazon promptly replaced at no cost (not even shipping). Other than that, weve had absolutely no problems. Having said that, we ALWAYS back up nightly (thats an easy thing to set up in the web browser based config panel), and theres no substitute for that no matter what kind of NAS you buy. As for Buffalo in general, we have used several different models of Terastations and Linkstations, some of which ran continuously for 4 and 5 years without failing before we removed them from service. In fact, the only Terastation that has failed on us, wasnt even the unit itself it was one of the drives. 5 years isnt an unusual life span for a hard drive that runs day and night. So I give this 5 stars