Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

Hancock Photography is a new business startup in Payson, Utah. They need a lot of storage for all of the photos they shoot and they need the security that redundancy gives. Being a startup, they really couldn't afford a NAS (Network Attached Storage) so we went with the next best thing.

Follow up:

The Buffalo Technologies Quattro TurboUSB external hard drive uses four separate hard drives with capacities of 1TB, 2TB or 4TB. The drive comes configured RAID 5 which offers the most storage space while protecting the data if one drive fails. It may also be configured RAID 0, RAID 1, or JOBD. The drive comes pre-formatted and ready to use with either USB 2.0 or eSATA interfaces. It actually comes with the USB cable as well as an eSATA cable and eSATA extendor to extend the eSATA connection on the PC's motherboard to the back of the PC.

In the case of Hancock Photography, we purchased the 1TB Quatro and plugged it into an older recycled PC loaded with Windows XP Pro. All I had to do was plug it in and turn on the power switch. At first I thought the drive was dead until I realized I hadn't plugged in the USB cable. The Quatro has an automatic power on/off which will shut the drive off if the computer is shutdown.

The 1.0TB Buffalo Quatro will give Hancock Photography a lot of short term storage as well as provide a place to backup all of their computers. The Buffalo comes with a full version of the Memeo backup software for Windows and MacOS. The software installed without any problems and was very easy to configure on both platforms. Now the next obstacle is figuring out a way to keep track of all of those photos.

Buffalo Technologies offers a wide range of storage solutions. If you are looking for a NAS, I recommend the Buffalo TeraStation III available in 2.0TB, 4.0TB, 6.0TB and 8.0TB storage capacities.