Product Reviews

The days when Network Attached Storage (Nas) devices were the sole domain of network administrators and geeks are long gone. These days Nas devices are sold as domestic appliances for storing photos, video and audio, then serving that content to multiple devices around the house.

This quad-drive Nas from Buffalo is available in capacities of 1TB, 2TB or 4TB, connects to your router using Gigabit Ethernet and can be accessed from an iPhone even when you're away from home. To use the iPhone feature, you first need to register your LinkStation with Buffalo, who will keep track of its IP address. By pointing your iPhone's browser at buffalonas.com and entering the name of your device, you can connect to it from anywhere you have Internet access. Once connected, you can stream music and video, provided its in a compatible format, to your iPhone.

There's also a BitTorrent client so you can download content directly to the LinkStation while your Mac is switched off, which will delight the record industry's trade association - the BPI. The device can be configured to start up and shut down with your Mac, and it goes into sleep mode when it's not in use. The case has been designed to dissipate as much heat as possible to reduce the need for cooling, which means that noisy and power hungry fans are used less often.

The disk array supports striping (Raid 0), mirroring (Raid 1) and Raid 5, which is a combination of striping and redundancy. Drives are removed by pulling off the magnetic front panel and flipping open a quick release clip.

In addition to the BitTorrent client, there's a DNLA compatible streaming server, iTunes server and a USB port, so you can directly copy content from digital cameras and camcorders. It also comes with a copy of Memeo AutoBackup, so you can back up data.

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However, if you're running Mac OS X Leopard, you won't need Memeo AutoBackup as the LinkStation Quad supports Time Machine.

At first glance, the LinkStation Quad looks more like a small safe than a storage device. Its black metal case and the circular status indicator on the front make it look like something you'd use to store jewellery and share certificates rather than music and home movies. The status indicator is designed to warn you when one of the disks inside is failing, so you can take it out and replace it. If you're running a Raid array with redundancy, such as 1 or 5, this is a seamless process. The front of the LinkStation also has a power button, a function button, and a USB socket for connecting a digital camera, camcorder or USB memory stick.

Setting up the Nas device was quite straightforward. With the box hooked up to our router, we easily installed the Nas Navigator application from the accompanying CD. According to the manual this process is supposed to save a test file to the Desktop with details of the LinkStation's IP address. Unfortunately, it didn't. However, we found the file by poking around in the application itself. We then had to force the Buffalo to obtain another IP address from our DHCP server, but that was quite simple.

With that done we were able to connect to the Quad through a web browser and set up the drive configuration, users and groups, and permissions. From the web interface we were also able to easily configure the iTunes and DNLA servers, Time Machine backup, the BitTorrent client, print server and automatic backup to an external USB drive. We also set up an FTP server and web access. When we gave the LinkStation a name and password for web access, it passed this along to buffalonas.com and allowed us to access the Quad from any web browser, including Safari on the iPhone. You can use permissions inherited from users and groups on the Nas or ones that you specify separately.

With the Buffalo configured the way that we wanted, we connected to it using SMB and were able to transfer files to and from it, and access them from our iPhone.

The LinkStation Quad, at under £500 for the 1TB version, is less expensive than the Thecus M3800, but it lacks that device's HDMI port, so you can't connect it to an HDTV. However, the range of features, ease of use and support for Time Machine make the Buffalo worth the price.