Tuesday 30 December 2008

6 Months with a Cheap(ish) NAS

It is now 5 months since I purchased and powered up my Buffalo Linkstation Live 500GB NAS and to be far it is has been more than man enough for the job.

A really neat option is the "one touch direct copy function" that is a means of taking pictures or movies from your digital camera, camcorder and storage device via USB port directly which is a lot easier than having to turn on a PC if you want to drop your Piccies to a drive quickly.

Stored data can be shared on your network and a built-in DLNA media server can stream it to a PC, a MAC an other DLNA CERTIFIED™ entertainment devices and it works like a dream to any attached device.

Note this is NOT the Wireless version!!

The Web Access feature enables you to access your data and media stored in the LinkStation via the internet by computers (and iPhone's I am reliably informed) via a portal run by Buffallo to which your Buffalo connects (if you confiure it to do so).

It also has a built-in BitTorrent Client, so it can download content without the requirement to keep your PC powered up if you are into such stuff as torrenting that is.

Intelligent Power Saving functions, timer power on/off and auto power on/off with your Windows PC all help towards power saving and eco in mind, don't know if this works with Mac's and I have had a few probs with my thinkpad not being able to wake it up if I fire it up on battery rather than on the mains.

I attach it on my gigabit ethernet and response is very good and I even have a 500GB WD MyBook USB drive attached which it sees and configures as another drive, although the perforamance to this drive does suffer a little, but is it still faster than direct USB connect to one of my PC's

It is not a bad box, does what it says on the tin and does it well with the minimum of fuss which at the end of the day is all you can ask for well worth the £130 I paid for it. I see Amazon have it on offer for £114 at the minute here

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