Buffalo LinkStation 220 2TB 2 Bay NAS Solution | Installed with 2 x 1TB Western Digital Red Drives

It's early days, but so far this very unassuming NAS seems to be doing the job I needed it to do. I was spurred to get it because a Lacie Network Space 2 developed the dreaded "click of death" and became unusable while I was copying the data off it for safe keeping. Fortunately most of my data lives in more than one location, so it took away most of this year's photographs but little else. I'm still hopeful that I will be able to salvage my images, but more of that in a moment.Obviously, after the demise of a NAS that does not support RAID, you get a bit more enthusiastic about using RAID in future, and the more data we entrust to these devices, the more picky we ought to be about its safety - think "worst case" - how would you feel about the loss of even just half of your most useful data, whether music, photos, or copies of things you've published, etc. If you're a creator rather than just a downloader, you're losing all the work invested in whatever's on your disks - anything downloaded can be replaced. You can store a fair amount in the cloud, but you need the storage and the bandwidth - and a home network does at least provide some consistency there. The 4TB LinkStation was replacing a 1TB Lacie drive, but with RAID, that 4TB is in fact just 2TB with your data mirrored on both disks that are in the enclosure (RAID1). You can opt for RAID0, which is geared for speed since both disks are then used for "striping" data that can be read out in parallel - but which offers no redundancy and actually less reliability than just a single drive! Why? Because a single 4TB drive can fail and you lose 4TB of data in one go, but the chances of one of a pair of drives failing is somewhat higher, and the loss of *either* disk loses *all* the data in RAID0, you're trading safety for speed. So I wanted safety and now feel that I have it. The NAS comes set up as RAID1 by default - the safe option that makes a 4TB drive 2TB despite its name.Installation was a breeze, at least if you've ever installed anything on a domestic wired Ethernet network. The NAS comes with a power and Ethernet cable so, even if you only have a broadband modem with spare Ethernet sockets on the back, you are good to go. In my case the NAS(es) are all on a Gigabit hub that feeds into a local Gigabit modem with a separate router for the Internet connection (10/100), and the network is part wired and part WiFi, so the NAS(es) make sense when there are potentially over a dozen devices all wanting to share data or back themselves up. The NAS can be configured by a web interface on the included CD (NAS Navigator) and I did a few operations to get mine as I needed it (renamed, and given Lacie-like directory structures so that it "looked like" the drive it was replacing on the network, together with a few admin chores). It seemed easy enough to use although it is a bit limited in some of the more useful functions (for example I'd like it to remember all the NASes on the network even if they are not active, which would allow it to "wake" a sleeping NAS drive that seems to have dropped off the network - the Lacie ones allow that). I didn't tell the Linkstation to become a member of our network "workgroup" - it decided to do that all by itself!In operation it is fairly quiet (moreso than the Lacie devices) and reasonably fast. I'm not sure what drives are in there (7200rpm) but the Lacie devices have Seagate 7200rpm drives with 32mb cache, and they seem faster, but that may be because they are not mirrored (something that slows down writes but not reads). No matter, since the Linkstation gives off an aura of solid competence; it even looks low-key, communicating with us either through software or the pair of lights on the right edge of the front fascia. It seems to serve music well enough, but even a gigabit network can become saturated if several devices are all performing network backups at the same time (yes, I did this with 3 computers simultaneously, and the music got choppy). The RAID1 setup means that should a disk fail, you can carry on using your data (copying it elsewhere would be a priority) while a replacement disk is sourced and installed. After that, the NAS is asked to mirror the new disk and off it goes doing that (it will take a long time if you have a lot of data). I love it.The manuals are a bit sketchy. If you have no background in computing devices of any kind, you can find yourself at a loss and, as someone that worked in IT for several decades and was always the one bridging the communications divide between gurus and customers, I offer my services to Buffalo to humanise their documentation! As it stands, it would benefit you to have some background in what you're trying to achieve, although if you can trust the device to figure out the situation once it is connected, you should be able to get up and running easily enough and sort out the background knowledge later on. The default setup works pretty well.The software is available on a standard installer CD, but on most of my computers I elected not to install the NAS Navigator application that is offered on the front page of the setup screens, and skipped to the list of "other applications" where there is the really nice backup program. For anyone that fondly remembers the Windows NT native backup program, this backup will seem very familiar in feel, but with nice new touches such as the ability to fire off an email when a backup job has been completed, and with what status. Since I hate nursing backup operations this is very handy in my case.The connections on the NAS hardware are also useful. Obviously there's the rather essential Gigabit Ethernet socket and the power port (fed from yet another power brick, sadly, although having the PSU outside the NAS box makes it easy to replace and keeps the case temperatures down - the drives are tightly contained in there), but there's also a USB3.0 port, which is extremely useful due to the uses it can be put to. The NAS has the ability to perform a hassle-free backup to an attached USB device (one button-press) should you need to move data off of the NAS for whatever reason, and the NAS software (a derivation of Windows NT server) is capable of recognising a good variety of disk formats and so should be able to make sense of most devices attached to it via USB. This is where my data recovery might still stand a chance. I've removed my Lacie "click of death" HDD unit and it now sits in a plug-in hard-drive unit  iDsonix® SuperSpeed USB 3.0/2.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station For 2.5 or 3.5in HDD/SSD Tool Free Design - Supports 4TB+ Hard Drives Premium 12V2.5A Power Adapter&3.3 Ft USB3.0 Cable included  that connects via USB to the Linkstation. This makes it far simpler to casually try to fire up the Lacie disk now poking out of this addon unit, and when by chance it starts up properly rather than dying, I'll be able to use the Linkstation to transfer the data off the dying disk to safety. It is a long shot, but should that disk ever repent and start up, I'm as ready as I can be to take advantage of the situation. So, the Linkstation's USB port was something I'd thought little of until now - and hopefully "someday my prints will come" as the song doesn't go.So to conclude, this is an inexpensive NAS that I think, on early acquaintance, punches above its weight. There are no bells, whistles or even too many flashing lights, but it sits there on the network looking for all the world like a safe haven for your more precious files. It isn't difficult to set up, but some background info doesn't hurt, and the backup software is great. Just what's necessary and nothing more, which suits me just fine. The backups seem to be a proprietary format which can be a nuisance to people with a single computing device - but which allows backup compression to eke out the NAS drive space, but the backup application does allow for simple file copying if that's your preference, so no sleep lost there! Backups can also be scheduled for dead time, such as overnight or, for a group of computers, staggered start times that will make better use of the network - the limit is your imagination, really. For 99% of most domestic backup situations, this does the job very nicely and doesn't break the bank.2019 brought (for us) a caveat to consider, and one that might increasingly affect the viability of the Linkstation line.We had an LS520DE experience a disk failure, and the RAID array did its job and preserved our files enabling us to secure them in another location (2 copies). So far so good. We began looking for replacement disks and ordered a replacement disk for our NAS. We wanted the exact same disk but Amazon told us a newer version was available and the old one discontinued, so we bought the newer version - but it's not compatible! A bit of reading later we now know that Buffalo lists "certified" drives for their NAS units, and the one we'd bought was incompatible. It wouldn't even format in the NAS. We've now had to scour Amazon for any compatible drives that are still in production, and there are hardly any. In fact we've had to accept increasing the capacity of the NAS because the only available "certified" drives available were larger ones.This problem also applies to the LS220 - if a disk turns up its toes you might well find it hard to replace because Buffalo's compatibility list seems not to be kept updated. They don't seem to be testing newer drives for compatibility and updating their list. This is a problem with any sort of device that relies on 3rd party components - the NAS enclosures might actually become useless because replacing a disk unit becomes a lottery. So, caveat emptor.

JANUARY 2020: well, just over two years have passed and everything still works just fine as described in some detail below. Firmware updated several times without problems. Easy to use the webpage interface to tweak settings. A product that works and continues to work in a market where it seems to be difficult to get satisfaction. Still recommended without reservation.This was my third attempt at satisfaction with NAS products: I'd previously had a 2Tb single bay WD MyCloud which displayed an 'unrecognised fault' and would not work even after trying the recommended 'fixes'. It was returned for a refund. It was replaced by a 3Tb single bay WD MyCloud. This did not work, either. It too, was returned for a refund. After watching the excellent Buffalo videos online I decided to test my patience [and probably that of Amazon!] further and ordered this two-bay/two disk 4Tb Buffalo. The video presentation was very reassuring: informative, without being overwhelming. An exemplar of clarity. I felt confident that I knew what to do before the product arrived. I am pleased to report that this one worked out-of-the-box and was relatively hassle-free to configure. I have a Cocktail Audio/NovaFidelity audio server. It works very well using its own internal hard disk. I wanted to be able to stream material from NAS storage to it using DLNA. If you were thinking along the same lines, take comfort from knowing that my Cocktail Audio unit found the Buffalo NAS immediately via wifi. I was at least as delighted as I was surprised - beyond amazed, lantern-jawed, actually! Everything was there, including numerous options for 'recently added' and 'recently played' playlists. Absolutely stellar. It all works. And it works perfectly: no delays, no stuttering, even with FLAC and WAV files of considerable size and bit-rate. It has never pixelated streaming videos, either.After several hours I was prompted to update the firmware. This I did. It too, was a hassle-free experience. Nothing frightening: not once did I fear 'bricking' the device. The option to set up to three scheduled alarms during any 24-hour period across one or more days of the week is useful. On the grounds of saving cost and the planet, it is a pity that the two disks cannot [apparently] be made to hibernate after a specified period of inactivity. However, in all fairness, this and other NAS devices take quite some time to start up and sort themselves out - it's not the same as waking a normal hard disk that has gone to sleep, so it's easy to imagine operation problems if the disk(s) are not ready and waiting for action.The part of the configuration that I found a mite challenging was converting the two disks to work as one, this is the RAID 0 option; the device came configured with the second drive being set up to 'mirror' the contents of the first - the RAID 1 option. Be aware, that if you transfer files to the device when it is working in RAID 1 mode, that you will lose any data that you transferred when the disks are reformatted by the setup procedure that converts the device from RAID 1 mode to RAID 0.As a final attempt to be relevant and helpful, resist the temptation to change the User Name and Password when you're going through the initial setup. If you have difficulties, the last thing anyone wants is faffing about entering long strings of upper and lower-case characters with symbols included. Leave at 'admin' and 'password' until you're confident that all is well. No-one is likely to break into your NAS in the initial configuration and setup stages. Don't forget though to change to something longer and much more robust, eventually.Oh, it looks good, too. Much better than average matt plastic. Very well put together. No creaks or feelings of flimsiness.I hope to have been helpful.