Buffalo LinkStation Pro Shared Network Storage LS-320GL

Advantages: Solid, feature packed, easy to use
Disadvantages: Not as fast as direct attached storage, plus a little noisy.

...I have been using my Buffalo (called 'Bertie'!) for over 4 months now, and it has worked very well indeed. Bertie is connected to my gigabit switch and is accessed by 4 other computers, and it also hosts a file sharing site too. The drive sits in a Windows environment, and is very easy to connect up. After a 15 second boot process, you access the features of the drive through a browser. All the usual tools for network drives are there, plus some seriously useful user permissions, and trashcan tools. It has hot swappable drives too (I bought a spare just in case), but this sold beast I feel will never breakdown. It's not the quietest drive in the world, but this is a minor annoyance. The actual data transfer over the network is not as fast as directly attached storage, but the benefits of using a network far out weigh this. When I need... Read review

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Advantages: external, fast, networked
Disadvantages: noisy fan

...If you need extra storage and you have a router then buy this - don't hesitate. I needed extra hard drive space particularly for back up and archiving a huge collection of photos (about 250,000 of them). The joy of this system is that you plug it into your router, although it will also work with usb if you don't use a router, and just map a drive in Windows Explorer. you install a small bit of software (if needed) to find it then just access it as normal. You can set up directories, sharing permissions and everything else via web browser. The added benefit is that anybody on your network can have access to shared files and private files. Only one thing I can say against it. The fan is quite noisy when it runs although most of the time it sits quietly in stanby mode. The noise is actually greater than the cooling fans running inside... Read review

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Advantages: Very fast, high capacity.
Disadvantages: Pricey, may be outlived by long-life Blu-ray discs.

...As our latest project comes to a close and we face losing any unused capital we again raise the idea of network storage with the boss. It's something we have mentioned repeatedly and suddenly find ourselves with an offer of whatever we can get for £1000. Taking our initiative from the US government we decide why buy one device when we could buy two of these? Thus we have one for our network project and finally a decent sized device for our own backups. I have to say I'm quite impressed so far. The unit is surprisingly compact and although it may look like a midi-sized PC case in the picture it is actually a lot smaller measuring a little over 6 inches high and only 4 inches wide. The back of the case has 2 USB sockets (one to connect to a PC, the other to network a printer). There's also a standard auto-sensing LAN port (10... Read review

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