Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live (250GB) Review

The Buffalo LinkStation Live is a NAS drive that supports iTunes,. Avoid this product at all costs - for now at least.

Summary

Buffalo Technology is well-known for its networking products, and now the company has attached all its networking prowess to a 250GB hard drive for a little bit of NAS (Network Attached Storage) action. Though the LinkStation Live’s most basic features work very well, we experienced numerous problems setting it up, and were ultimately underwhelmed with the overall experience.

Features and Design

As with most storage products, what makes the LinkStation special isn’t the hard drive, but rather what you can do with it. All storage products are similar in that at their core they are just a hard drive in a chassis, so what sets them apart is the included software and additional features. A NAS drive is basically a hard drive with an Ethernet port, so you plug it into your network to give all users a central place for storage and file sharing.

This is the 250GB model, but there are larger variants including 320GB, 500GB, 750GB and 1TB. The package includes the drive, a network cable, and backup software.

The front of the LinkStation Live has just a simple array of lights to let you know it’s powered, active, and when there’s a problem. The rear sports an Ethernet port and two USB ports for turning it into a print server, or for adding external USB drives for more storage down the road.

The software package is large and multi-faceted. It includes an automated backup utility called Memeo as well as many backup and file-sharing options. It even includes the ability to function as a print sever, and also offers (in theory) remote access to the drive’s folders via the Internet. You can also control permissions on a user-level in addition to many other custom settings.

Lastly, the LinkStation Live is DLNA certified, so you can stream digital content from the drive to a DLNA certified device. And with the capability to integrate with iTunes 7 so you can access files on the LinkStation Live, this product has the potential to be a great media server.

 

Image Courtesy of Buffalo Technology

More Testing

Even though the drive was always visible on our computer, we never got the links to work.

Going back to our Vista PC, we ended up downloading the latest version of the Memeo backup software from the website, and by golly, it does work with Vista. We are surprised and disappointed at the same time that Buffalo isn’t shipping the latest version of this software with its drives; or, at the very least, that the software can’t update itself to be compatible with Vista. Bottom line: There is a Vista version of this software, so ship it with the drives. 

Once we had the software up and running, it’s actually incredibly good. We’ve sampled a lot of backup software over the years, and this package is one of the best.

Here’s how it works: you tell the software which folder(s) to watch. As soon as you add files to that folder, the backup routine kicks in and your files are backed up. It is instant, and not on a schedule. It is all done in real-time, which we think if fantastic. Move one new picture into your “my pictures” folder, and the software will see it, and copy it to the backup drive. 

Just to recap at this point, even though the software was being wonky during installation, the drive was still showing up as a mapped network drive and things were working fine.

We then began to delve a bit deeper into the software, and were met with nothing but frustration. First, one of the desktop shortcuts opens up a diagnostic screen that scans the network and shows if the drive is present. We were able to get that to work. Okay, so the software can see the drive, right? So then we click on “view shares” and got this message.

The Buffalo software can see the drive, but can’t find the shared folders. Okee-dokey.

 

We’re sorry Buffalo, but this is just stupid. If the software can see the drives it can surely see the shared folders, or so one would think.

Moving along, we then went into the web server section of the drive and were met with a plethora of configuration options, but the one we were most interested in was the “web access” option, which allows folders to be shared over the Internet. That would be very useful, or so we thought. We enabled it, and then typed in the URL to login, and then could not log-in. We then downloaded the manual for the drive, followed the instructions, which were vague, and had no success. We then called Bufallo’s support line, but after waiting on hold for 20 minutes we threw in the towel. We are quitters, it’s true, but it should not be this difficult. If we, as advanced PC users, cannot figure this stuff out, there is no way in hell that a home user would figure it out on their own.

One positive note we can vouch for the drive is that Buffalo touts its ability to integrate with iTunes, and that is true. It showed up in iTunes without any user intervention, which is great.

Conclusion

The LinkStation Live is a mediocre product, which actually worked quite well once we had surmounted all the hurdles thrown in place during installation. It showed up on our network, and all files were instantly backed up, which was super. But we had so many problems during the installation and configuration process that we would not recommend this product to friends and family. Buffalo needs to revamp its software to eliminate all the errors, and make it much more user friendly before it can be considered a user-friendly product.

Pros:

• Drive shows up automatically
• Integrates with iTunes
• Lots of features

Cons:

• Software is buggy and confusing
• Poor documentation
• Ships with old backup software
• Long hold time with tech support
• Expensive

Use and Testing

We busted the LinkStation out of the box, set it down next to our router, and plugged in an Ethernet cable. We then plugged in the power cable, and walked over to our desktop PC and inserted the included software CD. And then the dookie hit the fan.

First we got a message saying the software is not compatible with Windows Vista. A few months ago we might have excused this, but c’mon, the OS has been out for almost a year now. Get with the times.

 

 

The backup software that came with the drive did not play with Windows Vista.

 

Okay, here’s where it gets really confusing. Then we saw the next three screens, in succession. Look at them and tell us if you think this is good software design.

 

Doh, the software did not install.

Okay, we see that the software did not install. Let’s click “Next.”

Huh?

 

Even though the software did not install correctly, we got a “setup has been completed successfully” window, which we found out is just the last screen in the setup process and has no bearing on reality. This is bad, for obvious reasons.

Despite the fact that the software didn’t install, we thought we’d look on the network and see if the drive was detected, and sure enough, it was. In fact, it even showed up as a mapped network drive, which confused us at first because we were looking for it under our “network,” but it was actually listed under “computer” for Vista users. That is a good feature, in our opinion.

We then moved to an XP machine and installed the software, which installed okay but there was still a problem. When you install the software, it puts links to the drive on your desktop, but they don’t work. When you click the link to the drive, you get this.

 

Someone at Buffalo needs to hire a copy editor.