Buffalo LinkStation Live 500GB Shared Network Storage HS-DH500GL
£160.92
- General: Device Type - NAS server / Total Storage Capacity - 500 GB -- Storage Controller: Type - Serial ATA - integrated / Controller Interface Type - Serial ATA-150 / Supported Devices - Hard drive
- Networking: Type - Network adapter - integrated / Data Link Protocol - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet / Network / Transport Protocol - TCP/IP, NTP, FTP / Remote Management Protocol - HTTP / Compliant Standards - IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3ab
- Expansion / Connectivity: Interfaces - 2 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 PIN USB Type A 1 x Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T - RJ-45
- Power: Power Device - Power supply - internal / Power Consumption Operational - 21 Watts
- Software / System Requirements: OS Required - Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Linux, Apple Mac OS 8.6 or later, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
DO be put off by the negative comments - I bought one of these based on the decent hard drive size and the inbuilt media server, and have been pretty much regretting it ever since. The media server software included is awful, a media library of any decent size (which you will have, presumably, otherwise you wouldn t be buying a 500GB drive) will make it choke, and it also makes the drive spin constantly. There are solutions out there - popular search engines will turn up relatively cheap alternatives that are daunting, but fairly easy, to install.After putting one of these alternatives on my drive, it worked well for 3 months or so. Then one day it started acting up. The drive had reassigned its IP address, and randomly flashed a bunch of settings. It has never worked entirely properly since. Just now I have altered the time setting (since it also seems to have dropped about 15 minutes in the time I ve owned it), and this has prompted it to disconnect from my network entirely.I honestly wouldn t recommend one of these to anyone. I would also recommend against buying other Buffalo products based on my experience with this one, and their entirely unhelpful support websites and staff.
Great Box - I have had this NAS unit for over 4 months now. It does have its negatives like it is not silent and the web interface for configuration management is slow but I have placed the box in my loft so I don t hear it and I have only ever used the web management interface once for setup so that is not an issue. I wanted to get the negatives out of the way to say that this is a Great Box, it works away in the background serving my music, video and general data files flawlessly. Once I had set my network up and got stability this box has not let me down. I just need to buy another one to provide redundancy! Will wait till the price comes down a little more.Good unit, would recommend to anyone.
really good - Im not usually this generous but this unit deserves it... my only little problem was setting it up trought the internet, that I had to ask a friend to help me...
Disappointing - should have been so good.......... - Unfortunately this was a very disappointing purchase. On the plus side it is well made, looks good and was a doddle to connect physically, but on the minus side it never actually worked as it should have. The software was difficult to install - I was left wondering if it had just ground to a halt or had completed and not told me. Several attempts at installing the software later and I still had a drive I was unable to use properly. I say properly as I could write data to it, but could not read/access data from it, including user manuals and other preloaded items that I wanted to view. I will admit that I didn t actually speak to Buffalo themselves - they may have had a simple fix to my problem, but I was working on the basis that it should have literally worked straight from the box - and it didn t.If you decide to buy one I wish you luck and hope this was just my bad experience or inexperience more like! Am waiting for my refund. I won t be looking for an alternative item either - regularly backing up to DVD should suffice (you just need to remember to do it!)24/11/08 - I wrote this review based on my own experience - having now looked at several of the most recent reviews I don t appear to be alone in being disappointed with this machine...probably not just me after all!!
No, do pay attention to the other reviews - this product still isn t great - A bit disappointed with this. I bought it primarily as a media server for my PS3. I m an iPod owner and all my music is in m4a (AAC) format and I ve successfully been sharing it off the PC using TVersity (Buffalo take note - this is an excellent piece of software. It works and it s free). But I quite fancied the idea of sharing my media without the need to have the PC on all the time. The other benefits like having another disk to use for backups, a print server, an FTP server, web access were all big plus points. I ve just spent an entire afternoon battling with the Buffalo LinkStation and it just fails completely as a media server. It does serve some folders...not all...merely some. And not all the time either...just some of the time. It s incredibly slow too. It doesn t show the entire list of folders on the PS3 immediately, that might take a while. Oh, and it doesn t seem to serve my m4a files either, only MP3s. This is a major limitation for me and I m now considering returning this somewhat lack-lustre product. It s the latest and greatest firmware, version 2.10, on it too. After reading a thread on the Buffalo forums it appears that I m not the only one having problems. A new firmware was promised back in September but here we are in November and there still hasn t been an update.I also wanted to use the FTP server as this would be pretty useful for retrieving files remotely. The FTP server is very, very basic. You can t even set the root folder for each user. When a user logs in they are immediately in the root of the drive and can see the system folders that you definitely wouldn t want anyone to see. It works but it needs to be better.So, to sum up, it s an OK product. The disk sharing works (albeit slowly), the print server works, the FTP access works, (I haven t tried the web access yet). It s all ok but definitely not great. I would expect this product to have the same functionality of software that s freely available but it falls short by a long way. If you were planning on buying this as a media server for your DLNA client (PS3, XBox 360, SoundBridge, etc) then I would advise you to think very carefully. The physical build quality of the product is good but ultimately the product is let down by mediocre software. Buffalo need to address this before I would give this product a higher rating.** UPDATE **I ve returned this product to Amazon for a refund. I emailed Buffalo technical support to try and find out about fixes for the problems I was experiencing and I didn t even get a reply. This is simply unacceptable. It s an average product hampered by less than average firmware and abysmal tech support. I m downgrading my review from 3 stars to 2 stars. Furthermore, I ve replaced the LinkStation with a Synology DiskStation 107+ and so far it s excellent and everything the Buffalo should have been.