Staring at an external hard disk may be enough to drive you to politics, but hold off on sociocultural suicide for just one moment -- this is one mass storage device that might float your coat. It's a 400GB USB drive with independent power supply and fanless operation.
The Buffalo DriveStation uses a 7200rpm SATA drive mechanism. This theoretically makes it fast enough for HD editing, but we suspect there may be a bottleneck because of the maximum practical transfer rates of USB. Further tests will confirm or disprove this wild assumption.
We're impressed that the DriveStation arrived pre-formatted -- it worked straight away on our ludicrously powerful desktop Mac. Multiple DriveStations can be stacked to save space on the desk, but a single unit prefers to stand vertically on four little rubber feet.
Disappointingly, our review unit wouldn't lie flat on its side without some discernible wobble. You could fold a bit of paper and stick it under one corner for stabilisation, but this is the 21st century Buffalo! Get with the era. Aside from this small niggle, the DriveStation's cathedral-like interior should keep us in BitTorrented movies for months (all legal of course; movies we shot and edited ourselves and hold full copyright to. Ahem). -CS
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