Terastations hot swapable feature question

[jgrayden]

   

I have a workgroup small business network in which i would like to use a terastation to have central backup. I would also like to be able to take a full backup drive home with me each night for offsite storage and bring it back in the next day and have that drive update any new information upon putting it in the hot swapable drive bay.

 

Would I be able to purchase a terastation with the hot swapable feature and each night take out 1 or 2 Hard drives home with me? Does the terastation operate fine without all drives in it?

[michiganian]

   

All TeraStation models requires 4 hard drives in the unit. It depends on your RAID configuration; however, I believe Buffalo does not recommend you to operate the system in "degrade mode." And, everytime you reinsert drive(s), TeraStation starts resync that takes several hours to complete.

 

If you want to take the backup drive to your home, better to use USB hard drive or another Buffalo NAS. It's not too difficult to set up, from my experience.

[jgrayden]

   

Thanks for the feedback, what specifically would you reccommend?

[Dustrega]

A single drive USB setup works out best. Most of the users who have posted here report success with the 1 TB models available by many manufacturers including us. Just remember to format to XFS so you can backup files greater than 4 GB. If not then a FAT32 format is suitable and readable from a Windows machine. With XFS you would need Linux or an OS similar.