Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
- LinkStation Live; Setup CD-ROM; Quick Setup Guides; Ethernet Cable; Power Cord; Warranty Statement
- Share storage and multimedia collections effortlessly-streams Audio, Pictures and Video to Gaming Consoles; Phones
- Share a printer or add a DriveStation for increased capacity
Buffalo LinkStation Live LS-CHL Network Hard Drive 500 GB - Type A USB
Rating: 
(out of 32 reviews)
List Price: $ 126.99
Price: $ 108.99
Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
- Add 250 GigaBytes of network-attached storage via wired or wireless connections
- Dual USB 2.0 ports make it easy to add additional hard drives for extra space or backup
- Simple setup and maintenance, versatile usage, and a compact design
- Minimal power consumption and scheduleable auto-power off
- Silent internal fan; internal power supply
The LinkStation Network Storage Center from Buffalo Technology offers an easy and economic solution to add 250 GigaBytes of network-attached storage via wired or wireless connections. Quick and simple installation allows you to instantly store and sh
Rating: 
(out of 49 reviews)
List Price: $ 599.00
Price:
Buffalo LS-QV4.0TL/R5 LinkStation Pro Quad 4.0TB NAS | US $657.53 End Date: Friday Feb-10-2012 7:55:57 PST Buy It Now for only: US $657.53 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
 | US $224.62 End Date: Friday Feb-10-2012 7:56:03 PST Buy It Now for only: US $224.62 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
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Review by Sam Smith for Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Rating:
I ordered this item from another website, and so I avoided any issues that the previous reviewer experienced. That aside, I have now had this product for 2 weeks and it has been working great. The setup took a couple tries to locate the drive, but since that minor bump in the road it has worked very smoothly and exactly as advertised. Hooking up my current external USB drive was very easy as well. Upload/download speeds are very fast. Webaccess works great as well. My only complaint is that when in Auto power mode and the drive is powered down due to inactivity (as it should), you cannot initiate the hard drive again from Webaccess. It can only be turned back on from the home network. Thus, if you want to use Webaccess occasionally, the drive must be ON all the time and wasting energy. A minor gripe in the grand scheme of things though.
Review by Gerd Sousa for Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Rating:
The product is almost everything I was expecting based on the description. One important piece that is not clear on the specs is that the external USB disk MUST be formatted at XFS in order to the users be able to read/write on it. Any legacy USB disk you might have is probably already formatted on NTFS or FAT32. After you install it on the Linkstation USB port you can read but not write on it. There are 2 major impacts on it:
First, you need to spend a lot of time to backup the original content of the Linkstation unit, format it on XFS and spend a lot of time again doing the copy of the data back to it…and you cannot use the unit to do it by itself. You must do the copy from a networked PC causing an intense and unnecessary traffic. Took to me 2 full days to do this operation in a 300GB disk.
Second: After the format you cannot remove the USB disk and read in other machine with Vista or XP on it. Only Linux/Unix OS would be able to read data from there.
One small pitfall happen during the setup, a bug that Bufallo claims impossible to reproduce, so they cannot fix but it is related by dozens of users in their FAQ blog, has locked my admin password. I couldn’t enter the admin username and of course couldn;t change anything in the configuration. Only after few days I was able to find out a solution doing a “refresh” on the firmaware. Their blog has the step-by-step for it. I hope the same thing does not happen again.
Besides that, the wake-up function is working fine (but you should use their NAS Navigator application on each client to make the unit awake after a stand-by). The driver is fast enough to allow DVD streaming from a DVD movie saved on the unit and played on my notebook. Also, the Media Server capabilities works fine and any iTunes in the network can create a library based on it. I might end up using the USB port as a backup of the sensitive data in the Linkstation and not as an extended storage unit. (this is the company recommendation anyway)
Review by Jay Vasa for Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Rating:
Superb product. This machine will become your storage center in the house. I have put my music, videos, and pictures on it. Not only do you get 1TB, but you get a dependable server. Underneath, it is running a linux kernel that has a lot of services. There is a PnP (DLNA) server works with the xbox 360 great. The DLNA Server is really running the Twonky Media Server [...]. There is an FTP Server, Memeo Backup Server. There is a bittorrent client. The web access works great too– You can upload files anywhere in the world. You need to go to [...] for it to work. The admin interface works good. Although I would of liked a faster processor on this, it does do the job. The gige speed gives me a write of about 16MB/s using jumbo packets. It works with XP and Vista 32/64. I’m using firmware 1.02.
You can also expand the storage adding a USB drive. I may add another TB as I have almost maxed out this 1TB.
Review by walkair for Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Rating:
Take it easy – this is my first product review on Amazon web site.
Intro
I’ve owned 2 Buffalo hard drives for last 3 years: 500GB USB and HS-DH500GL 500GB NAS. Both of them are still working.
LS-CH500L
Happy owner of LS-CH500L 500GB NAS hard drive. I got it two weeks ago for extra capacity and bit-torrent. I would give this box a 95% customer satisfaction. I would concentrate on comparing LS-CH to HS-DH, which is the model that replaced by this CH Series line.
Pros:
1. Good looking design
2. Very quite and cool
3. Pre-configured On/Off schedule settings
4. Easy setup (YMMV, since this is my second Buffalo NAS)
5. Built-in Bittorent client is absolutely terrific
6. DLNA certified out-of-the-box with stable and user-friendly Media server (Mediabolic garbage replaced with MVConnect)
7. Web Access – dyndns out-of-the-box through buffalonas.com web site
8. Reasonably priced
Cons:
1. Print Server – usability in most cases is 30% – it’s still doesn’t support multifunctional printers, so called AIO.
2. New firmware changes and features might not be included
Conclusion:
Essentially CH represents a repackaged DH with modified web interface, different vendor for a media server and integrated Bit-Torrent-client.
– I wish Buffalo would revise firmware more often for previous models. Unfortunately, Buffalo is up-to making more sales by forcing us to buy new boxes instead of building a brand loyalty and releasing new features into previous models to keep existing customers happy. Very sad, but true.
BTW, Amazon should merge this product review/description with
“Buffalo LinkStation Live LS-CHL – NAS – 500 GB – Serial ATA-150 – HD 500 GB x 1 – Gigabit Ethernet”, since it’s exactly the same product.
Review by Jeffrey M. Chang for Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live 500 GB Network Attached Storage LS-CH500L (Black)
Rating:
I purchased this product primarily as a back-up server for another NAS device (not made by Buffalo Tech). My primary NAS has only 500GB. I thought the 1TB Linkstation could eventually replace the primary NAS device. So far, I am not convinced.
By comparison, the Linkstation was not as easy to set up; setting shares with restricted access somewhat confusing. I am still not able to set up web access to the admin page, which makes adding users when away from home not possible. It is for this reason, I am still hanging on to my primary NAS device. The NAS Navigator desktop SW is not at all stable/reliable — it is not able to see the NAS drive half of the time even when the drive is accessible via Windows Explorer. I share the same complaint that you can’t ‘wake up’ the Linkstation remotely in auto power saving mode.
The worst of part of my experience so far (after 2 months) was the drive failed after 2 weeks. It was replaced by Buffalo under warranty. I have to give some credit to the helpdesk folks for making the exchange process pretty painless.
Review by mag_music for Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
Rating:
I purchased this device some months back. It’s not as fast as I’d have liked, but it’s a marked improvement over the Maxtor Shared Storage Drive NAS, which was so incredibly slow I had to send it back. (At the time I bought it, this 250 gb drive cost MORE than the Maxtor 300 gb NAS unit, BTW.) It works tolerably, though I have experienced the hesitations others here have mentioned. (I have NO trouble with real long file names, though. None at all.) Eventually, I filled the thing up, but that’s not a problem because according to the marketing info I could buy a large gb USB2 external drive, attach it to the LinkStation and commence to steppin’, right? Well yes, BUT… What Buffalo doesn’t tell you ANYWHERE–not even in the manual–is that when you add an external drive, it becomes available as a SINGLE share point only, named USBDrive1 (unchangeable), and that IT IS NOT ABLE TO HAVE ANY OF THE ALREADY-LIMITED SECURITY FEATURES OF THE MAIN UNIT. I found this out by calling Buffalo.
This is completely useless, stupid and duplicitous on Buffalo’s part. I bought the unit with the expectation that I could expand it and the expansion space would either integrate itself into the main pool of disk space or would at least behave like the rest of the unit, allowing me to “parition” it into share points of my choosing that I could assign drive letters to. Who needs a 300 gb pool of disk space that you can’t keep ANYONE out of? And you can only add ONE external drive, at that. My only option here is to buy another LinkStation altogether and tie up another port on my switch. I certainly could use it, but I’m not sure Buffalo deserves any more of my money after this.
From what I’ve been reading, there IS no decent, fast, well-thought out NAS unit priced for the home/small business market. I think Buffalo’s TeraStation is way too expensive for home use, and from the reviews I’ve read it’s not appreciably better than the LinkStation, anyway.
I didn’t want to have to build a PC and screw around with Microsoft’s interminable security BS just to have large mass storage at my disposal, but it looks like that’s the only choice there is, which is really disappointing.
Review by bloodnok for Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
Rating:
i regret the acquisition of this waste of time. it fails to accept files from either windows or osx if the filename is longer than a ridiculously short default, it’s as slow as molasses, and it’s bloody noisy to boot. also buffalo technical support is pathetic.
mine is for sale once i wipe its disk …
Review by Mark Permann for Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
Rating:
I bought this 6 weeks ago to serve as an MP3 fileserver for my 2 Squeezeboxes so I wouldn’t have to keep my PC running all of the time. The main draw was that it would use little power and be quiet.
Up until now, it has been both of those things. Unfortunately, it has gotten a lot noisier lately – buzzy. I did some searches on LinkStation Wiki forums and it turns out this is a common problem, whose source is either a cheap fan and mounts or a cheap back panel that vibrates or both. I have an email in to BuffTech, but it seems like unhelpful tech support is another common complaint.
3 stars because it does function well, is very flexible with all of the geek tweaks out there (as long as you’re willing to invest some time) and it doesn’t seem like it has any real competition. Too bad it doesn’t deliver on the quiet part.
Review by Charles Dunaway for Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
Rating:
Although the manufacturer says it is Mac compatible and supplies a separate Mac setup guide, the device has a 32-character file name limitation! That means that you can’t really copy or backup your Mac files to the Linkstation if any of them have long filenames.
So for my purposes, this is pretty much a worthless device and I returned it the same day it arrived.
Review by Holly Ross for Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN
Rating:
I just got off the phone with Buffalo Tech Support (took 10 minutes to get a service rep) and found out that my Hewlett Packard Photosmart printer is NOT supported through the USB Print Server interface of this device because it’s not a Postscript printer. When you go to the Print Server setup, there is a drop-down option for “Postscript” and then 19 model choices for the Epson “PM” and “LP” series line of printers. According to Jeremy, the service rep on the phone, those are all Postscript printers and that’s the only type of printer this drive can support. Even though that’s not very consistent with the CD-ROM manual which says, “If a non-PostScript printer is connected to LinkStation, then select a compatible printer from the `Printer Type’ pull down menu. Other settings will have to be set based on the printer’s documentation. If a printer is not available from the pull down menu, then it is not supported by LinkStation.”
I am still getting this thing set up so I can’t yet rate it on its other features, but do beware if you are looking to use this as a print server. So far I really like the rest of the features that it claims to have, so we’ll see how those work out.