The Jury's Out (Buffalo LinkStation 250GB Network Storage Center)

Name: grahamt

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Product:	Buffalo LinkStation 250GB Network Storage Center
Date:	05.09.06 (5286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does the basics reasonably well. Good manufacturer support.

Disadvantages: Unreliable, Extras are seriously deficient.

I have a home network based around the various rooms in our house, that provides service to a number of machines belonging to my family. The initial purpose was to enable our :ntl broadband connection to be shared. This we have achieved through a combination of a TrendNet Wireless Broadband Router and a Belkin 8 Port Switch plus yards of Ethernet cable running through the wall spaces! Why cable if wireless? Because cable is still more reliable, faster and more secure. I always use it in preference wherever possible.

What we didn't have was a single machine to act as a central repository for all of those files we wanted to ensure were backed up securely or which we wanted to share, such as our MP3 collection. What we also didn't have was a printer that was always accessible no matter what machines were switched on or off.

I had made an attempt to provide something of this nature by way of pressing into service an antique (for which read 10 years old!) Toshiba Tecra CDT510 laptop, an ex-office machine, with an external hard drive to expand the miserly 2.4Gig of internal hard drive space. However, with only a 133Mhz Pentium processor and only capable of running Windows98, it was never going to be very reliable. An alternative and more permanent solution needed to be found.

I researched the Internet and concluded that what was needed was a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, that would plug directly into the network without any intervening PC to enable it. That way it would always be on and accessible, no matter who was using the network. The device I found that appeared to meet the need at an acceptable price was the Buffalo Technology LinkStation HD-H250LAN which, as it's name suggests, contains 250Gig of disk space, more than adequate for our immediate needs.


Design
~~~~~~~~~
The LinkStation is a neat device, that does not take up much room and can easily be hidden away in a convenient cupboard or wardrobe. Note though that it is not wireless enabled and so must have access to a wired network connection. It's about 9 inches high and deep and about 2 inches wide. From this you can probably guess that it's designed to stand upright and a clip-on base is provided for this purpose.

The front edge has the master on/off switch, a couple of indicator lights and, at the bottom, a USB socket (I'll get to this later).

The back edge has the outlet vent for the built-in cooling fan at the top. Below this is a recessed switch, which can only be accessed with a pointed object such as a Biro. This is marked "Init". My version of this model (not the very latest; I've had mine about 18 months) has a switch beside the Ethernet socket where you connect the network cable that enables you to connect either a normal straight-through cable or else a cross-over cable. The more recent versions of the LinkStation don't have this switch. They detect automatically what sort of cable is plugged in. In my case the network connection is via a Belkin 8-port switch but could equally be to an ASDL/Cable router. In practice it could (and can, as we'll see later) be plugged directly into a computer but that would mean that it would entirely occupy the probably only network connection on the PC.

Below the Ethernet port is a second USB socket and finally, at the bottom is the power socket where you plug in the supplied two-pin mains cable. No power converter is required.


Installation
~~~~~~~~~~
Now, you may be thinking, if this is simply a hard drive, how can it work without a computer to manage it? And, of course, you would be quite right. You can't just plug a hard drive into a network cable. Something has to manage the data that you want to store on it, usually a computer. It isn't immediately obvious but that's exactly what the LinkStation is. Yes, it doesn't look like any normal computer but, like any computer, it does have an operating system, in this case Linux. However, accessing the operating system functions can only be achieved by using a second computer since the LinkStation has nowhere to connect either a computer monitor or a keyboard or mouse.

What the LinkStation has is a built in Web Server that can be accessed using your normal Web Browser (Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer...) by putting in it's network address (an IP address such as http://192.168.0.2). This gives you access to the administration functions that enables you to configure the LinkStation for your needs. The LinkStation initially has a default IP address but will try and get itself one allocated by a DHCP server on your network, if you have one. There is usually one of these built into an ADSL/Cable router if you have one of these to separate your home network from your broadband connection. If you don't then you just use the default address (192.168.11.150).

The LinkStation is essentially a Linux computer and, if you know anything about Linux systems you will know that the file systems in which they store their data are not understood by Windows. The LinkStation uses a format called ext3 and in order to make the data stored in this file system available to a Windows computer over the network it uses a SAMBA server, which makes ext3 format files available in the SMB protocol that Windows understands. All this is transparent to users but I just thought you might like to know how it works.

So, you've plugged in the power cable and the network cable, which is pretty much all you need to do, and you've pressed the On switch. First thing that happens is that the top light (Power) on the front starts to blink. This is the light that indicates that the LinkStation is booting (starting) up. Below this is another light that will also start to flicker. It's marked Link/Act and indicates that a network connection has been detected. When the Power light is constant the LinkStation is ready for action.


Configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~
Now is the time to go to your normal computer and access the LinkStation's Administrator functions. Fire up your web browser and type in the IP address of the LinkStation. If you have an ADSL/Cable router with a DHCP server to assign IP addresses to the devices on your home network you may have to enquire on that first to find out what IP address has been allocated to the LinkStation. Alternatively you could use Tim Conner's cute little PCFinder tool (http://www.download.com/PCFinder/3000-2085_4-1055 6670.html?tag=pub) to search a range of IP addresses for the hostnames and MAC addresses of all the computers on your network.

The first thing that happens is you get asked for a Logon Id and Password as the Adminstrator functions are protected so as to ensure the they don't get used by the wrong people. At this point there is a Logon Id but there is not yet a password. That is something you can and should set immediately. The Logon Id is "root", which will be familiar to anyone who has any experience of UNIX and Linux systems. Root is the all-powerful superuser, the God of computer systems. Well, here root is only a demi-god. It's powers are limited to just those functions provided by the administration functions available through the web browser.

Here, apart from setting an administrator password you can change the hostname by which LinkStation will be known on the network to something of your choice and also set a fixed IP address if you want, rather than have the DHCP server assign one. In practice, once an IP address is assigned by the DHCP server it is unlikely to change. IP addresses on private networks tend to be "sticky". You can set the correct date and time and also assign the time zone in which you are located. This will ensure that files created on the LinkStation will have the correct creation and modification date and time information assigned.

Most especially though, once you are here you will want to set up a series of directories in which to store your files. Don't worry, you don't have to set up each and every folder this way, only the very highest level ones, the "home" directories. The purpose is to provide the ability to have each user on the network have their own location for their files to keep them separate from other people's files. Of course, you could have just one Home directory in which everyone keeps their files but having separate ones enables each to be protected with an access Userid and Password so that everyone can keep there data private. You can, of course, have a mixture of public and private directories. The Userids and Passwords can only be set through the administration function so the Administrator (root) will, of course, always know everyone's passwords.

The LinkStation supports both Windows and Mac systems. When you define your home directories you have to state if they are intended for Windows only, Mac only or both. We don't currently have a Mac on the network so this review is limited to Windows experiences. That may change when my daughter comes back home from her current job. She has a Mac G4.


The Extended Features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, that's the basics. What else might you want to do with it? Well, one thing I definitely recommend is to set up the Disk Sleep function. The LinkStation is a consumer product and so cannot be expected to have the rugged durability of "industrial strength" file servers that are used in business environments. Hard disks used in home equipment just aren't designed to run day and night. Just like us, they need a little rest. The Disk Sleep function enables you to set a time slot where the LinkStation powers itself down and gets a bit of shuteye. Unless you are one of these types who spends all the hours God sends on the Internet I suggest that when you go to sleep is when you put the LinkStation to sleep. Once the Disk Sleep is set, the only difference you will notice is that the Power light on the front of the casing continuously dims and brightens, whether or not it is actually asleep at the time.

I mentioned that the LinkStation has two USB ports. So, what are those for? Well, the one on the front of the casing is for connecting another hard disk, the sort that can connect to any computer via a USB cable. The reason for doing this can be two-fold. Firstly, you can use it as an extended storage space, so expanding the capacity of the LinkStation from just its built-in hard drive capacity. You can decide to make this space accessible to the network or not. In all other respects you can use it as though it was built-in capacity. What you do have to do though is to use the Disk Format function to prepare it to receive data. This is because it needs to be in Linux ext3 format rather than the Windows file system format in which it is almost certain to be formatted when you bought it.

The other reason is that you can use it as a backup device for the Disk Backup function. However, here I am recommending that you don' t bother. Of all of the functions of the LinkStation, this is probably just about the most unfriendly and useless. Yes, you can backup data to the attached USB hard drive but, bizarrely, the LinkStation provides absolutely no function with which to do a restore should you need to!!!!!!! Doh! Even if you do do a backup and then detach the hard drive from the LinkStation, the file system format is Linux and so cannot be directly understood by Windows. You can't simply plug it into you normal computer and read the files! I did try it and even installed Stephen Schreiber's ext2/3 file system extension for Windows (http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html) but couldn't get it to work. I don't know if the problem was the software or the disk backup format but, as I don't currently have access go a Linux system, I was unable to check.

Instead I recommend that you do your backups over the network (you DO do regular backups DON'T YOU????? Follow grahamt's recommendation. No data can truely be considered safe unless it exists in three different places, one of which is normally offline, e.g. detachable hard drive, CD, DVD...). Attach, for instance, your USB hard drive to your normal computer and copy you important files to it from the LinkStation. It may be a bit long-winded but at least you know that you now have that data safe and in a format whereby it can be restored back onto any computer, including Linux ones. Yes, Linux can read Windows file systems but not vice versa! Blame Bill Gates!

What about the other USB port, the one on the back of the casing? Well, this one is for a printer as the LinkStation also has a built-in Print Server. Now, in principle this is a Good Idea. After all, I know you can attach a printer to any computer on a network and make it available for anyone to use. However, that means that the computer has to be switched on any time anyone wants to use the printer. Our main printer is attached to my wife's laptop but when she isn't using the laptop she switches it off. That's not much use to anyone else. So, attaching the printer to the LinkStation sounds like it should be a good idea shouldn't it? Wrong.

The Print Server only supports a limited range of Epson printers (primarily for Mac support) plus Postcript enabled printers. If you don't have either of these you're stuffed. Or, that’s what they tell you. Once again, this is not quite correct. Our main printer is an HP DeskJet 5550. Now, if you plug it into the LinkStation and then go through the normal Windows “Add a printer” wizard it won’t work. You’ll just find the network printer attached to the LinkStation but you won’t get an opportunity to define the type of printer and so associate the correct printer driver, even if you already have it installed on you computer.

However, if you haven’t yet installed the printer driver on your computer then (and this is correct for the HP; I can’t advise on what might happen for other makes and models) as a part of the driver installation you get an opportunity to define the actual printer to Windows. If you do it this way then the printer gets set up correctly and will work, after a fashion. What you won’t get is feedback from the printer. This is because the LinkStation’s Print Server does not support printers that require two-way communications, such as those with built-in document scanners or fax machines. Consequently you don’t get HP’s neat little graphic that tells you how much ink it thinks you still have left in the ink cartridges. So, another useful feature badly implemented. Dohhhh!

What else? Well, the LinkStation also has a built-in FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Server. Now, this is useful and proved to be something of a life-saver, as you will see later. For those of you not familiar with the term, an FTP Server is an application that enables access to files over a network connection in a controlled manner to people to whom you might want to make certain data accessible but not the whole system. You can control who can log on to the FTP server and what they can see and do. If you have your own website you will know that this is how you load your webpages to the website. You use an FTP Client such as FileZilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/), my current favourite, to access the files from your computer. This could be from anywhere in the World, so long as you have set up your broadband router to permit FTP traffic to pass through the firewall to the LinkStation's FTP Server.


The User Experience
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So now you have set up all the basic functions that enable the LinkStation to be used in anger. So, what's it like to use in practice? Well, it pretty well does what it says on the tin. To access the LinkStation as a place to store your files, first of all you have to create a network link to it from your computer. With WindowsXP you do this from My Network Places by clicking on Add a network place. This will take you through a Wizard which will enable you to define the directory(s) you have set up on the LinkStation as accessible from you computer. They will be in the format "\\hostname\directory" where hostname is the name you gave to the LinkStation and directory is one of the home directories you set up.

Once you've done this you can do pretty much whatever you please just as though this was a file system on your own computer. You can define new folders and sub-folders and store files there.

My LinkStation has been in use for over a year and I have to say that from this point of view it has done pretty much everything that I would have expected of it. That is, until a couple of weeks ago, when everything went disastrously wrong. One day everything was hunky dory, the following day everything had pretty much disappeared. I couldn't see any of the directories. All the computers in the house reported that the LinkStation wasn't actually on the network at all! However, I could still "ping" it via its IP address and I could still get into its Adminstrator functions via the web browser but when I did it reported that about half the directories were missing.

As I could access the LinkStation via the browser I decided also to try the FTP Server since that can also be accessed simply by knowing the IP address. That worked as well but also reported that only half the directories existed. So, the immediate requirement was to secure as much data as possible. I FTPed all of the visible files to another machine on the network. That was better than nothing! I then checked the stats for the LinkServer and the Administrator reported that the used disk space was exactly what I would have expected it to be if all of the data was still there. So, there's hope at least.

Next thing was to run the Disk Check function. This required me to switch off the Disk Sleep function. I assume it won't take the risk of the LinkStation going to sleep in the middle of a disk check. I ran it but, once again discovered that this is a function poorly implemented. Whilst the disk check is running the third light (bottom light marked Diag) blinks and when it's stopped the check has completed. However, nowhere can find any report of what the disk check found. I don't know if there are any errors or not! Pretty useless, eh?

Now it is time to consult the experts. Buffalo Technology provide telephone and email support. I decided to use email as I'm a cheapskate :-)

I explained my predicament and asked for their advice. They asked some further questions, one of which was, "What is the firmware level?" I found that out via the Administrator (Rel 1.44) and they told me that this was a lot out-of-date and as a first step I should upgrade to the latest (1.47). They pointed me to the location of the update file and invited me to download and install it.

Now, this is where it gets a bit scary! It turns out that you can't just apply it with the LinkStation set up as it is. To do the upgrade you have to have the LinkStation directly attached to a computer. If you have a firewall on the computer it must be switched off. You must also press that Init button I mentioned at the beginning, which turns out to be the thing that resets the LinkStation back to its factory settings. As I say, scary stuff. I suppose that switching off the firewall isn't really a problem as, unless you are also using wireless networking on the same machine, the only thing to which the computer is connected is the LinkStation.

I did as directed and fired off the update. Error!!!! A message box popped up saying that the computer and the LinkStation had to have the same network address before the update could be applied. Of course, the computer still had the IP address assigned by the DHCP server but the LinkStation had been set back to the default IP address of the factory settings. Be that as it may, this still doesn't make any sense. You can't have two machines with the same IP address on the same network. However, I did as instructed and, sure enough, the second attempt reported that no LinkStation could be found.

Back to the experts, with screen captures (always a good idea to help diagnosis) emailed to them as evidence. It turned out that the error message was in error!!!! What it should have said is that the IP addresses of the computer and the LinkStation had to be on the same subnet. Basically what this means in this case is that if the LinkStation is 192.168.11.150 then the computer's IP address must be 192.168.11.anything BUT 150. I set it to 192.168.11.100. I ran the update and this time, SUCCESS!!!!!!

I ran the Adminstrator there and then, without even plugging into the network and this time everything looked OK. I reset the computer back to its normal network settings including getting the IP address from the DHCP server (it reallocated the same one as normal. Sticky, remember?) and rebooted so as restart all of the security functions, especially the firewall. I plugged the LinkStation back into the network and started it up. With bated breath I checked my network connections and there, as if by magic, were all my missing connections to the LinkStation. Nothing was lost; all present and correct. Of course, all the settings of the LinkStation were still factory defaults so I had to go through a reconfiguration process all over again.

In retrospect, what I should have done is see if the Init factory reset alone fixed the problem but I didn't think to do it at the time. If this ever happens again (God forbid) I'll try that first.


Support
~~~~~~~~
I have to say that throughout this nerve-racking experience the support provided by Buffalo was excellent. They showed patience and commitment to solving my problem. As I was using email exclusively I wasn't expecting immediate solutions but they turned around each contact within 24 hours each time, possibly even sooner but most days I was at work so couldn't check up until the following evening anyway. From their website and email addresses I conclude that support for the UK is actually provided out of Ireland.


Conclusions
~~~~~~~~~~~
I have to say that overall my experience with the LinkStation has been disappointing. It does the basics well but then I would have expected that of any such device. What attracted me to the LinkStation, apart from the price, was the extras. However, for my purposes the extras are pretty well useless and so add no value at all to the package. Had I known this in advance it is unlikely that I would have bought it. I would have investigated one of the other manufacturers, such as LaCie.

I was astounded to find advertised on the Buffalo Tech website that this very model of the LinkStation had been awarded in February 2005 a Best Buy by PC World magazine, Editor's Choice by Computer Shopper magazine and a PC Pro Recommended. Well, that's destroyed my faith in computer magazine reviews! Perhaps I should contact them all and invite them to read about my experiences?

In my opinion this is only an average network storage server and, in view of its apparent unreliability, cannot recommend it unreservedly. The only reason it doesn't get a lower rating is that at least it didn't actually destroy any data.

Summary: Doesn't live up to its promises

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