Buffalo TeraStation 5400 Review

When it comes to the meat and potatoes of the 5400, Buffalo provides you with NASNavigator2 software to get you started.  The software takes a novice approach to installing the TeraStation, so much so that it actually instructs you on where to connect the Ethernet cable.  Once you make your way through the installer, the last phase allows you to install NovaBACKUP, an iSCSI connection tool, TurboPC, TurboCopy, the user manual, and Adobe Reader.  None of these are required or installed automatically.

NASNavigator2 gives you a bird’s-eye view of all things Buffalo on your network.  The software displays all makes and models it can find and offers up some information about them, including the Firmware Version, network configuration, and available space.  If you have more than one Buffalo NAS, it can even help you find a specific one by sending an instruction for it to play a little jingle.  Admin password is required.

The software has a rich set of NAS related items to help you:

• Map remote default share to drive letter
• Disconnect mapped drive letter
• Map all remote shares to drive ltters
• Create desktop shorcut for Tera/LinkStation

Right Clicking on a specific NAS adds the ability to open the Web Settings.

The web administration of the 5400D is chock full o’ features, but the interface looks rather dated.  Although things may not appear all that “current”, everything you need is there.  The layout is logical and broken down into eight main centers, each of these sections contains nested subsections that seem to go on forever with nearly endless options. :

• File Sharing: Create folders, add users and groups.  Turn on services like SMB, DFS, AFP, FTP, SFTP, WebAccess, and NFS
• Drives: Formatting and Checking disks, USB Drives, RAID Configuration, RAID Scanning, LVM, and iSCSI
• Services: DLNA Server, iTunes Server, Sqqueezebox Server, Print Server, Web Server, MySQL Server
• Web Services: WebAccess Remote, Amazon S3
• Applications: BitTorrent Client, TeraSearch, Surveillance Cameras, Antivirus
• Network: IP Address, Workgroup/Domain, Port Trunking, Service Port Restrictions, SNMP, Ping Test
• Backup: Backup, Replication, Fail over, Time Machine, Direct Copy
• Management: Name/Time/Language, Email Notification, Logs, Sleep Timer, UPS Sync, Restore/Erase, Update, SSL, and Notifications.