Buffalo Technology LinkStation Network Storage Center

Reviewed by: VReggie

Duration of ownership: 1 Year

Strengths: Network Accessibility, ease of setup. Storage capability. Small footprint.

Weaknesses: Slow to respond to write requests over network link. NOS on device limits file size to 4GB, which limits or excludes the use of NTBackup or other file compression backups. The hard drives are run of the mill, just as likely to suffer the same hardware failure you're trying to protect yourself from.

Overall Evaluation: Although decently priced, and easy to use (for PCs) they're somewhat unreliable for totally automated backups. The units I've used seem to respond slowly to write requests, especially after long idle periods, which sometimes results in my backup software timing out. I've used NTBackup, Veritas Backup Exec and other compression based applications but have had the most luck using a simple XCOPY batch file.