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Good on features, low on appeal

The new Buffalo DriveStation Quattro crams in four 250 GB hard drives to give you a terabyte. Structurally rugged, this drive is encased in a rather bulky black casing, with all sides made of metal. Weighing in at 6 kg, it is tough to move around.

The drives are SATA150 at 7200 rpm. The accompanying software allows you to configure the drives to work in five different modes: Normal mode (appearing as four separate 250 GB drives), JBOD (which shows the drive as one contiguous 1 TB drive), RAID 0 (also appearing as a single 1 TB drive but faster), RAID 1 (500 GB with mirroring), and RAID 5 (750 GB and a combination of speed and reliability).

The Quattro supports USB 2.0 and the newer and faster eSATA interface. Buffalo even provides a PCI eSATA card with a bracket and a cable for those—and that’s the majority—whose motherboards do not support that interface.

It took 43 seconds for a 1 GB file to get copied to the drive; a gigabyte of assorted data took 52 seconds. The unit tends to heat up considerably during operation; the 12 cm fan at the back doesn’t seem to be doing its job.

The Memeo Autobackup software that accompanies the drive is versatile. It automatically backs up your data to a wide variety of destinations such as hard disk, removable drive, FTP server, Network Places, iPod, and Memeo Internet Disk—an online service  for Memeo Backup users. Secure Lock Ware—another bundled application—uses 256-bit AES encryption to protect your data.

The absence of a backup button and the relatively slow speed bring down the appeal of the Quattro for system administrators, and the rather high price tag of Rs 49,000 doesn’t help.

Specifications
1 TB (4 x 250 GB SATA); 7200 rpm; Seek time: 11 ms; Interface: USB 2.0, eSATA; eSATA PCI card with bracket; Software: Memeo Autobackup, Secure Lock Ware; Weight: 6 kg

RATINGS
Performance  :  3
Features : 4
Build Quality : 4
Value for Money : 2
Overall : 3

Contact : Advent Infotech Pvt Ltd
Phone : 011-41436751
E-mail :buffalo@adventelectronics.com
Web site : www.buffalo-technology.com
Price : Rs 49,000