I bought this unit as I have two desktop PCs and a laptop, my wife has a laptop, and our lodger has a laptop, and we need a central backup and sharing location The linkstation arrived on a rainy Saturday afternoon, which was perfect, as it gave me an excuse to set it up straight away.
Having several PCs and laptops around (self employed IT consultant) I found myself in need of a suitable backup solution, which would also allow me to have a shared storage area, so I can use which ever pc is handiest for whatever job I am working on. In addition to this, we have an ever growing music collection, and it made
sense to put it all together on one disk. My wife and I also share certain documents, so it would be handy to use for that also.
Opening the box I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the linkstation is no bigger than the average hardback book. A little heavier, but I think that's forgiveable.
A quick read of the very basic printed manual, and the device was plugged in.
It's important to realise at this stage that the link station is Network Attached Storage, and not just an external hard disk. It needs to be connected to a router, and it needs to be connected by an ethernet cable. Fortunately Buffalo have thought to provide one. Even better, it's a flat one, so will happily run under your carpet if so required. Both Euro and GB type wall plugs are included, as is a CD with software on it.
It looks ok as well, although that's fairly subjective really. I wouldn't mind it sitting on the bookcase in full view, but my wife would.
Setup
Without any intervention at all, it picked up it's IP address from the router, installed itself on the network, and sat quietly whirring away in the background. It is already set up with an area called SHARE, which is, well, the shared area. Without installing any software, or performing any setup of any kind, I was able to open My Network Places (in Windows of course), navigate to my workgroup (called WORKGROUP) and there was the linkstation. I was able to create new folders under SHARE, and copy data to it straight away. Unless you have changed your workgroup name from the default, it should be that easy to get up and running.
I haven't used the supplied software, as I found the web interface more than adequate to do what I have needed.
I have set up new shares, users, and private shares. I have setup 3 scheduled backups to an attached USB disk, and these seem to be working fine. The settings are a little unclear, as there are two identical options, but it appears to work ok on either.
Setting up users, and groups is straight forward, although then assigning those rights to users is not the most intuitive thing. Once you have worked it out, it's ok though.
In Use
It's like having another hard disk. It's very quick, not too noisy, and does what it says on the tin. Sits there quietly whirring away in the background, without me needing to do anything apart from access it as if it were a disk. That's it. I don't use the FTP or Web access, and I don't use it for media streaming, so I can't tell you about those features, but it is great as a NAS box. I can access my work from my main desktop, or my laptop. My wife and I can share budget and banking info, as well as our wedding photos, and we now have our music libraries in one place. I tunes is perfectly happy accessing the mapped drive for the music folder.
There is an issue around users in both Vista and XP though. In Vista I have to log on every time I start the PC. No biggy, just a bit annoying. In XP I have to log on from my, but my wife doesn't from hers. The difference? I have my pc set up for multiple users. And that's the only difficulty I have in using it.
Uh-Oh
We had a power cut. Just a small one. You know, the pc reboots, the telly blips, and the lights flicker. And the Link Station shuts down. No problem, thinks I. I'll just switch it on. And there is a red light flashing, and lots of beeping. With the help of Google, and a lack of fear of all things techy (I'm an IT Consultant with a very small geeky side to me), I set about fixing it. It took quite a lot of technical know how to do so, and I'm quite sure that if I hadn't been a bit technical, it would have been reduced to a doorstop. I have little doubt it would have been replaced under warranty, and my backups would have been restored easily enough, but that's not the point. Since it was fixed, we've had another couple of cuts, and no further problems.
Conclusion
9 and a half out of 10. It's made a big difference to my ability to work anywhere in the house, without having to have the main pc on, and it's taken 3 music libraries and put them in one place. It's easy to use, and set up, and apart from the one blip, it's well behaved. It's fast and quiet, and doesn't look bad. In fact we've become quite dependant on it for sharing our stuff. Oh, and when my wife decided to fill her laptop with water, it meant her work was still available, and she could carry on working from my laptop.
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