BUFFALO LinkStation HD-HG400LAN External Hard Drive 

Monday, January 23, 2006

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The Buffalo LinkStation is a Gigabit Network Storage Centre that provides an easy way to share files, images, videos over a network. It is meant for SOHO networks. It has a compact design and can be kept on your desk. The drive features two USB ports, one in the front and one at the back, where you can connect extra drives. It, however, doesn't let you connect two printers or drives at a time. The drive comes with an auto-sleep function that can be configured to suspend operations for a while, but during that period you cannot access any data from the drive. The best part is you don't need to install anything to start using the LinkStation. It has an internal silent fan, so it makes no noise at all. All configuration and monitoring operations can be done remotely using its Web interface. Else, you can use the Client Utility supplied with it. The utility also lets you map the unit as one of your drives for convenience. You can configure it on your network to get its IP address either from a DHCP server or assign one statically. Security-wise, it needs you to create separate users on it. You can then organize them into groups and give them access to files & folders stored on the device. It can't use accounts created on other servers. It comes bundled with Easy Backup that lets you schedule and perform backups and restores of your data. In our tests, it was able to transfer a 635 MB file in 2 mins 40 secs on an isolated gigabit network.

Bottom Line: Considering this is a gigabit-enabled drive, it would be a good buy for a small-user group needing a private file storage space prior to putting it on a bigger file server.

Swapnil Arora

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