Linksys by Cisco Linksys NETWORK STORAGE LINK USB 2.0

Linksys Network Storage Link with Maxtor OneTouch II

Linksys NETWORK STORAGE LINK USB 2.0 Review, by Becky Waring December 29, 2004

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• Reviewed by: brizuelat

  Strengths: Easy to set up, convenient for file sharing, simple interface.

  Weaknesses: Cannot use hard disks over 250 GB.

  Overall: Besides the fact that one cannot use a hard disk over 250 GB, this small interface unit does quite a bit. Having used two for work, one can fully appreciate its use. Of course, one could potentially alter the firmware with Linux, but for others, the simple to use web-based configuration guide is just enough. Should you need, though, say, two or four TB, an industrial sized storage device will do best.

• Reviewed by: pstreicher

  Strengths: Small form factor, quiet, works well

  Weaknesses: none

  Overall: I've played with this little unit for months now and have finally come to love it. Yes, it takes 30 seconds or more to come up to speed but why be in a hurry. I recently was able to backup all the MP3's of the two girls iTunes folders with ease. Each girl had over 800 tunes. Once I culled out the two or three songs that had CRC errors, I would restart the copying and then it finished without error. I have backed up more files on two other computers in the house and am going to continue to do so. I intend to buy a second drive for redundent backup.

• Reviewed by: edwashere

  Strengths: Quiet. Small. Built-in Backup Program. Web Menus to administer. Quick. Simple. Smart Product & Design.

  Weaknesses: Does not reboot if power outage. You have to push the power button. Documentation is confusing. If you haven't accessed in some time it is slow to come back online.

  Overall: This is the greatest little NAS system you can find. For someone with File Server or Network experience you will find it easy and quick. It is very quiet and you will not believe how small and simple it is to use. If you are familiar with Linksys products then this will be a breeze. This is my second one. I originally purchased it to quickly set up a friends office with 15 users. It was up and running in minutes and I could give them group shares and individual home drives in seconds. You can create group shares and give user id's and passwords access. And then you can create a HOME drive and give individual access and keep others out. I set up an office with a shared disk and a printer in minutes and was able to train someone in the office to administer the system. The best part is that it has a backup application. I bought another one for my home and it works great. Now my wife has a place to put all of her files and information and so do I. We also have a family share to share information as well. The backup is a little different here. You can set up a backup from a share on your laptop or PC and have it backed up every night. You can also backup specific shares on the disk as well. But what most will want to do is purchase a second disk and have the first on backed up. The way the software works is you select a disk backup and every night it makes a disk copy of the first disk. So basically disk two copies disk one. Disk 2 deletes the previous nights copy when it makes the night's copy. So you are not keeping an incremental backup. You are making a nightly copy. This is something you should know in advance. If you mess up a file and figure it out a week later and you want to restore a specific version from a week ago, you can't do it. You can only restore the previous night's backup. This is a disaster recovery function. Not a backup. The only real issue I have with the whole system is the startup. When I go away from my computer for say two hours and I come back and I open my H: drive, the disks, which are in rest mode, spin up, and take about 20 seconds to get going. Once it is up and running then it is fine, but that first time it takes some time. I think this is an external drive USB issue. I have very fast drives and I have a large cache on the drives, but it still is slow that first time. I got the fast drives on purpose, but it does not help. They are in sleep mode and it just takes some time for them to spin up and start. I hate to wait while I watch them spin up. I really do not think this is a linksys issue or an issue with the Storage Link. It is more a function of the power saving feature of the drives. Anyways, it is a great system and I would highly recommend it for home or small office use.

• Reviewed by: nanuuk

  Weaknesses: The unit arrived defective.

  Overall: I received the unit, attempted to connect it and get it working on my network. After 2 hours with Linksys tech. support it was determined the unit was defective. Sucks.

• Reviewed by: mlhickok

  Strengths: Extremely quiet. Very small. Low Power consumption. Easy management. Great user security. Auto Backup/mirror. (Hacker's Toy)

  Weaknesses: If you are looking for a full fledged office file-server, this may miss the mark.

  Overall: Note: There are many revisions of the firmware. (If you have one of the earliest versions out of the box, you could hack it and make it a Linux server for any purpose.)The newer firmware versions allow FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives--but I have not tried this.Could be used as an office File server/WINS server, but fast-access files should be run off of a workstation hard drive and you would use the Backup feature to archive them at night.I am using the default EXT2 format (a Unix standard--Not a proprietary file system!) which could be plugged into a Windows PC if you install the support for Unix--free download from Microsoft. (It is not worth the hassle to do this, however.)I use mine for large file storage. It is fast enough to play MP3 files directly from storage which suits my needs.It runs for months on end and never needs a reboot. I have had no problems with any of the features. (Scandisk, Security, etc.)Features:User and group security levels for folder and file permissions. Disk "mirroring" on a schedule (not a RAID) for data redundancy (if you have two drives)Backup Workstations (pulls from a Windows File share on a schedule) if users leave their computers on at night.Administration through web interface.File access via web interface with password protection. Could be used to share files over the internet if you redirect port 80 on your firewall to the NSLU2.Built-in WINS server.