Buffalo Linkstation Pro 1 TB Review

Buffalo Linkstation Pro Features

• Simplified File Sharing For Home or Small Office Network
• Active Directory Support: Works as a client in an Active Directory domain allowing LinkStation Pro to utilize the domain users and groups.
• High Speed Processor, DDR2 RAM, and Fast SATA Hard Drive
• Control Access With Group and User Level Security
• Access Data from any Windows or Macintosh Computer on Your Network
• Two or More LinkStations Can be Used to Back Up Each Other Over Your Network
• Easy Setup Does Not Require Drivers
• Scheduled Backup via USB 2.0 to External Storage
• Expand Storage by Adding a USB 2.0 Hard Drive
• Auto-Sensing 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Port
• Gigabit JumboFrame Support (4k, 8k, 15k)
• Memeo™ AutoBackup Software for Windows PC Included. Download Memeo™ AutoBackup.
• Minimal Power Consumption
• Trouble Alerts: Get an e-mail when the drive senses a fault
• UPS Support: Auto power down in case of a power failure

This NAS is a very full featured device. It's missing some media functions but it's a solid drive for the price.

To install the Buffalo NAS Navigator put in the included CD and run Setup. On my system it had mapped a drive letter L: to the default share named share.

From the Buffalo NAS Navigator you can map network drives, change the Linkstation's IP address and access the browser based manager.

The Manager screen exposes the wealth of options available to you. Out of the box you can use the drive without changing a thing. For the general home user that's probably fine but the more security conscious will want to setup users and groups and secure their shares from prying eyes.  After you login with the default user (admin) and password (password) you'll see the home screen.

From the Manager you can setup USB drives as additional NAS storage, reset the device to factory settings, add users, groups and shares. The Manager interface is very speedy and responsive.

Benchmarks

I speed tested this drive and was very pleased. Some NAS drives have poor quality network ports and slow CPU's and this will show up in network performance. To test, I copied a 1GB file from my system to the Linkstation Pro at various network speeds. Each test was done 10 times to allow for variances in network conditions. My system and the NAS were plugged into my D-Link Gigabit switch so there were no other devices between my test system and the NAS. I also copied 1 GB worth of 256K files to the NAS.

Device	Large File Test	Small File Test
Buffalo Linkstation Pro 100Mb	87.6 secs 91.3 Mbps	280.59 secs 28.47 Mbps
Buffalo Linkstation Pro 1000Mb	63.96 secs 125.07 Mbps	273.92 secs 29.16 Mbps
Buffalo Linkstation Pro 1000Mb (4k)	52.47 secs 152.47 Mbps	237 secs 33.7 Mbps
Buffalo Linkstation Pro 1000Mb(9k)	48.81 secs 163.88 Mbps	222.7 secs 35.87 Mbps
Simpleshare 160 100Mb	211.05 secs 37.9 Mbps	392.25 secs 20.36 Mbps
Windows PC 100Mb	105.6 secs 75.76 Mbps	205.5 secs 38.9 Mbps

The Linkstation Pro is the fastest 100Mb device on my network. If you don't have gigabit networking yet then this is a great choice.

As you can see setting the device to use Jumbo Frames makes a large difference in performance. This device says it supports 15k frames which I could not test because my NIC only supports 9k frames. Unfortunately I don't yet have another gigabit device on my network to compare the Linkstation Pro's performance to.

All in all the device worked very well and was speedy and responsive. I played back and XVid avi and MPEG from the device with no jitters or pauses. It worked great. I paid $170 with shipping for the 1 terabyte device and it is well worth it.

NAS Drives and Windows Backup

Can you use Windows Backup with a NAS? Yes!

What are the problems? The problems are with using the scheduler. When you want to do a backup that runs at a regular interval, that backup must run as a particular user on that machine.

The problem with that approach is that the backup runs as a whole new background session without any cached password information. In other words, it doesn't know how to log into your NAS. Of course if you don't use authentication then this isn't a problem.

I solved this problem for a client using Cobian Backup. This program is free and it's a pretty nice backup program. It saves in a standard zip format so you can use Cobain or your favorite unzip program to restore your data. If your NAS supports FTP you can use that protocol to do backups with Cobian. All in all it's a better solution than Windows Backup and it's free.

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NAS Drives and Windows Vista

One of the features NAS manufacturers mention is "Windows Vista Compatible" Why? It's just Windows, right?

Windows Vista uses an authentication scheme called NTLM2 where as most NAS devices using Samba support NTLM but not NTLM2.

There's 2 ways around this. One is to get a drive that specifically mentions Vista support. The other is to turn authentication off. Most drives can be run with no security so there's no need for password exchange which is where NTLM and NTLM2 are needed.

Turning off security can be a deal breaker. On a home network it can be no big deal to run an unsecured NAS. If you want or need even a little security then you would need a Vista capable device.

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