Buffalo DriveStation Ultra is a 10-drive DAS with up to 80TB of storage
While many home consumers are turning to the cloud for their storage needs, this is not feasible for many businesses. If you are a game developer or movie editor, for example, you will need a lot of local storage. As we trend towards 4K video, this need is amplified.
Today, Buffalo Americas announces the DriveStation Ultra -- a direct attached storage (DAS) solution with capacities of either 40 or 80TB -- yes, terabytes! While Thunderbolt 2 is the primary connection type, it also features USB 3.0 an eSATA. The company promises write speeds up to 1243 MB/s using RAID 0.
"Professionals working in video production, gaming development, CAD design and more require both fast data transfer of extremely large files and the capacity to store them in a convenient form factor that is readily accessible. The DriveStation Ultra was designed to meet the performance and capacity needs of these industries with its 10-drive design, delivering up to 80 TB in a desktop form factor", says Buffalo Americas, Inc.
Matt Dargis, COO, Buffalo Americas, Inc. says, "we designed the DriveStation Ultra from the ground up to meet the capacity, scalability and speed requirements of our professional customers, equipping it with multiple interface support and an industry-first 10-bay design for a desktop form factor. Enabling customers to daisy chain up to six DriveStation Ultras for each Thunderbolt 2 connection on their devices means that a customer with a Mac Pro with six Thunderbolt 2 ports could have an unprecedented 2.88 Petabytes of storage at hand".
Buffalo shares the following features.
- Desktop form factor with 10 hard drives provides up to 80 TB of storage within easy reach
- 40 TB model features 10 NAS hard drives and 80 TB model features 10 helium-filled enterprise hard drives optimized for continuous operation
- Multiple I/O interface support to deliver maximum flexibility and compatibility for Mac and PC users, including two Thunderbolt 2 ports, one eSATA port and one USB 3.0 port and corresponding cables
- RAID 0, RAID 5 and RAID 6 options allow users the flexibility to maximize capacity or protect data with RAID redundancy
- Three-year warranty and 24/7 U.S.-based technical support
If you are an average home user, you probably do not need 40 or 80TB of storage. You can store your family photos, home videos and torrented porn using a much smaller and more affordable solution.
What I like about the DriveStation Ultra -- other than the insane storage capacity -- is the versatility. To get the best performance from this DAS, you will want to use Thunderbolt 2, but it can be rare on Windows machines; having eSATA and USB 3.0 as options is appreciated.
How much does this DriveStation Ultra cost? The 40TB model is $4,799.99, while the 80TB model is $9,999.99.