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Buffalo’s 2TB LinkStation Pro is a sleek single-disk NAS that’s about the same size as your average router. Unlike larger NAS devices, it isn’t designed to be opened or upgraded. On its back panel are a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB2 port, which let you connect an additional drive to boost the NAS’s capacity. There’s also a switch that lets you choose between on, off and auto modes, the latter option allowing the NAS to power down when it isn’t being accessed and automatically power back up as soon as a connected PC tries to browse its contents.
The provided installation disc makes setup and configuration as easy as possible for Mac and Windows users. A big, friendly install button maps the NAS as a network drive before prompting you to install Buffalo’s NAS Navigator configuration tool. It also gives you the option of installing utilities such as Network-USB Navigator, which automatically detects and provides access to USB drives when you connect them to the NAS; TurboPC, which is purported to increase transfer speeds between the NAS and your PC; TurboCopy, which makes similar claims of making Windows file copies faster and NovaBackup, a backup scheduler.
NovaBackup is the most overtly useful of these tools, and it provides a simple, wizard-based interface that lets you select your entire system drive, personal files or any other combination of directories to be backed up fully or incrementally. Advanced option settings let you enable features such as virus scanning, and set up a regular backup schedule.
We were also pleased to find that we could immediately detect the NAS on our network and access its web interface from our browser without installing any software at all. The web interface gives you all the tools you need to configure your NAS, from formatting its hard disk to creating users and giving them different access privileges.
The LinkStation Pro is in fact one of the most feature-packed NAS devices around, having a range of extra features that range from the commonplace, such as remote web access to data stored on your NAS, to a range of popular media streaming options that let you share movies and music that you’ve stored on it. It can also act as a Squeezebox, DLNA or iTunes server. The USB port on its back panel can be used to share extra storage across your network or connect a USB printer. Other features include the ability to upload pictures in a designated directory to Flickr, connect an Eye-Fi wireless SD card and back up content to the NAS from Apple devices using Time Machine. It even has a BitTorrent client that lets you download items running without having to leave your PC switched on.
Unfortunately, the LinkStation Pro is also remarkable for its extremely slow file transfer speeds. It’s at its fastest if you install Buffalo’s speed-enhancing tools on the PC from which you’re copying. This software uses your PC’s memory to cache data during the transfer process, but when using it we saw an average transfer speed of just 37MB/s in our large file transfer test and 6.4MB/s in our small file test. Without the software installed, transfer speeds dropped to 27.4MB/s and 6MB/s respectively. Although its slow speeds are likely to be a problem if you regularly run large backups or stream media to multiple devices, you’ll have no problems streaming standard definition movies or audio to a single client.
It costs around 9p per GB, and its single 2TB drive means that you can’t even set up redundant storage on a second drive. Despite its comparatively low price of £171, we strongly recommend buying a two-drive device, such as the Western Digital My Book Live Duo 4TB.
