Product Description

The Buffalo LinkStation Live features a high-performance Marvell Media Vault Processor, DDR-II RAM and a high-speed SATA drive to deliver increased throughput rates of up to 35MB/s, which is five times faster than average single-drive NAS devices on the market. It also has an iTunes" Server function, allowing iTunes"7 software to access music files saved on the LinkStation Live for playback via the iTunes" portal. Furthermore, Direct Copy functionality enables files to be transferred directly onto the device from a digital camera or USB flash drive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27288 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Buffalo
• Model: HS-DH500GL-1
• Released on: 2007-02-05
• Dimensions: 4.41 pounds
• Hard Disk: 500GB

Manufacturer's Description
The LinkStation Live is a high capacity consumer NAS (Network Attached Storage) device that allows users to store digital content such as videos, music and photos, and share or stream it around their home network. The product provides a cost-effective, high-performance NAS solution that delivers superior reliability and usability for consumers, and is available in capacities of 250GB (HS-DH250GL), 320GB (HS-DH320GL), 500GB (HS-DH500GL) and 750GB (HS-DH750GL).

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Don't be put off by the negative comments...
Many of the Buffalo Linkstation Live reviews here are significantly out of date. I've recently taken delivery (May 2008) of one of these beasties from Amazon and have had no problems with it whatsoever. Potential purchasers might like to note the following points:

The firmware currently supplied is version 2.10 so there's no need to mess around with downloads and upgrades - it's plug'n'play as it comes straight out of the box.

Everything works just fine with Vista.

Far from being noisy, the unit is whisper-quiet in operation. Quieter than all of my desktops and all but my quietest laptop, in fact.

The unit does not continually thrash the drive when some of the more intensive media serving is activated. The most frenzied activity occurs only when the library is being updated, and even then the noise level is less than any of my PCs.

I've had no problems with the Linkstation acting as a shared library for iTunes. With 1,167 albums currently loaded on there it works first time, every time, and keeps on going all day.

I've no doubt that some of the more negative reviews were accurate at the time of writing, but things have moved on. I'd have no hesitation in recommending this product based on my experience so far, indeed I may well be buying a second example now I've found how useful it is.

easy SAN, but read caveats
OK. It works blisteringly quick. When connected hardwired, I wouldn't know I wasn't working on my HDD. But it has downsides which are not obvious:
1. HDD seemed to be on all the time, even if no computers connected to the LAN
2. It's noisier than expected (see 1 for why that's annoying). I ended up running a CAT6 into my loft.
3. The web interface is painfully slow--but you don't use it that often
4. FTP security setup is a pain. You have to password the entire share (no separate FTP security), which for me meant Google Desktop would not search it.
5. First one died unrecoverably after a power surge (despite being powered through a surge protector). Amazon's phenomenal quibble free returns policy made good, but I lost about 100GB of data which I'll never see again. (Should I have backed up elsewhere? - doh)
6. Buffalo technical support is a bit slow to respond. Emails in 48 hours, so a diagnosis takes a week or so.

It's not all bad, though:
1. The print server works extremely well--I have a Canon Pixma IP1500, and it's almost as quick as in the port itself (unless transmitting over WLAN).
2. It's blisteringly quick -- as quick as a laptop HDD when connecting hardwire
3. Setting up shares is a doddle. It's never had a conflict with multiple users.

I've not tried the USB HDD expansion, the LinkStation HomeTheater combo, so can't comment on those.
4.

Not as good as it could be
Firstly two points on noise and included software. While others note that it is noisy, I don't think it's too bad - I have seen and heard worse. The included software is a bit clunky and is not the best out there. Ok, now the real news.

A couple of days ago, it simply refused to share folders. No indicators why this happened and none of the Buffalo FAQs or KB helped from the support web site. I could change the TCP/IP address, but that's all. A re-initialisation also failed to resurrect it.

I took the radical step of re-flashing the disk (which looks like it copies a new linux OS and restarts). The utility tells you what's happening and I watched the front information LED show what it was doing. Eventually it restarted. Luckily that worked and I could see it on the LAN again. Not fully out of the wood though as it was then stuck in Japanese mode, which is not my first language. Eventually sorted that out but was not easy.

It's still not clear why it simply stopped sharing files so the best I can say is two out of five (rather than one) as when it works, speed is good and is easy to use. But reliability? ... don't think so.