Digital Trends

Buffalo Technology LinkStation Live (250GB)

October 7th, 2007 | by Josh Norem

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