Buffalo DriveSation Duo 2TB USB 3.0 review

External hard disks are great for expanding the capacity of any PC or laptop, but if it fails you will lose all your data. Buffalo’s DriveStation Duo aims to solve this problem by including a second 3.5in drive bay and RAID support, ensuring your documents remain safe even if one of the disks fails. File transfers from this external hard drive should also be fairly rapid thanks to USB3 connectivity, assuming you have matching ports on your PC.

The two pre-installed 1TB hard disks aren’t hot-swappable, but can be replaced easily in the event of a disk failure. To exchange one or both disks you simply need to remove the front panel and slot a new one in its place. Power and status LEDs indicate whether a disk is working correctly or if there is a problem. It’s relatively straightforward to configure the two disks in either RAID 1 mode for data redundancy or RAID 0 for increased performance using the included software.

A fairly comprehensive application suite is supplied with the unit; the highlight is Buffalo Backup, a simple utility that can create copies of all your hard disks with just a few clicks. The SecureLock program can encrypt any content saved to the DriveStation, but we would hardly consider it essential for everyday use. We were also surprised to find a RAMdisk utility on the disc – it could be useful if you edit high definition video thanks to its lightning fast transfer speeds.

Dual-bay NAS devices are fairly common, but far fewer direct attached storage units have room for multiple hard disks. The DriveStation Duo lacks many of the advanced features typically found in NAS units, but costs roughly the same; its main attraction is its blistering file transfer speeds. Before we activated RAID, performance over USB3 was respectable when transferring large files, managing 123.7MB/s write and 154.9MB/s read speeds. Small files were slightly slower, but 78MB/s write and 87.5MB/s read speeds are still quick. Importantly, performance was nearly identical when we enabled RAID 1, so there’s little reason not to use it to protect your data. Although the DriveStation Duo can’t match the extreme speeds we’ve seen from external Solid State disks or Apple’s new Thunderbolt interface, few of the non-SSD enclosures we’ve seen are as fast.

The DriveStation is reasonably compact and won’t take up a lot of room on a desk. However, noise could be an problem; because two hard disks create more heat than one, Buffalo has added an 80mm cooling fan to keep temperatures under control. When idle it isn’t particularly loud, but as the hard disks spin up it becomes more distracting. The drive’s AutoPower feature shuts down the unit automatically when the connected PC is switched off, saving power and keeping the noise down.

The DriveStation falls somewhere between a NAS device and an external hard disk; it lacks many of the advanced features typically found on NAS units and you can’t hide it under the stairs, but it has the benefits of RAID security and faster file transfers. It’s pretty expensive, but if you’re after a super-fast disk with data redundancy the DriveStation Duo could give you some peace of mind.