Buffalo LinkStation Pro user reviews
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User reviews3
itczech 31 March 2008
Good: core sharing
Bad: support
Comment: I bought one of these for a customer and found that it had a number of issue that Buffalo support do not consider to be faults:
1. I tried 4 different external usb hard disks and only 1 was recognised. Apparently only Buffalo USB hard disks are supported.
2. When I physically unplug a USB device the Buffalo generates an error message that suggests that I need to replace a disk. Buffalo support suggest that the device be powered down before removing USB connected devices. This is impractical in a multi user environment.
3. When I purchased the product I checked and found that APC UPSs were supported so I purchased an APC Back-CS unit, connected it and found that the Buffalo did not detect messages from it. It now transpires that only the more expensive APC SUA series UPSs are supported.
4. Buffalo does not maintain the documentation in line with firmware updates so the firmware has features that are not documented.
5. Both the documentation and firmware are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
6. The latest manual describes 4 backup methods. My firmware shows 3 methods with 1 shown twice.
7. I cannot get the device to join an active directory without errors being generated.Buffalo support have been unable to resolve these.
8. Buffalo support need to be chased for action. They claim (unsurprisingly) that they are busy.
Given all of the above, I decided that the product was not fit for purpose and so I bought a Qnap TS-109 Pro which is great. I have also found Qnap support to be excellent.
Martin Seib 31 March 2008
Good: Core sharing
Bad: Support
Comment: I bought one of these for a customer and found that it had a number of issue that Buffalo support do not consider to be faults:
1. I tried 4 different external usb hard disks and only 1 was recognised. Apparently only Buffalo USB hard disks are supported.
2. When I physically unplug a USB device the Buffalo generates an error message that suggests that I need to replace a disk. Buffalo support suggest that the device be powered down before removing USB connected devices. This is impractical in a multi user environment.
3. When I purchased the product I checked and found that APC UPSs were supported so I purchased an APC Back-CS unit, connected it and found that the Buffalo did not detect messages from it. It now transpires that only the more expensive APC SUA series UPSs are supported.
4. Buffalo does not maintain the documentation in line with firmware updates so the firmware has features that are not documented.
5. Both the documentation and firmware are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
6. The latest manual describes 4 backup methods. My firmware shows 3 methods with 1 shown twice.
7. I cannot get the device to join an active directory without errors being generated.Buffalo support have been unable to resolve these.
8. Buffalo support need to be chased for action. They claim (unsurprisingly) that they are busy.
Given all of the above, I decided that the product was not fit for purpose and so I bought a Qnap TS-109 Pro which is great. I have also found Qnap support to be excellent.
Dan Carter 1 December 2006
Good: Fast
Bad: Terrible support, awful documentation, attached USB disk read-only if formatted FAT32
Comment: I got 2 of the LinkStations together with a drivestation for backup.
Other reviews have mentioned that you must allow the LinkStation to format the USB disk in order to make it writeable. This is true, but only if you format as either XFS or EXT3. If you format FAT32 (an option), the drive cannot be written to when shared - bizarrely it can be written to by the built-in backup software. Unfortunately you cannot then clean up old backups etc without connecting to a PC.
Also, out of the box, the backup between LinkStations didn't work. You need to set an option on the fileshares first, which is very poorly documented.
I called (European) tech support on both of the above issues. In both cases, I spoke to rude, agressive, unhelpful idiots who told me all sorts of garbage to try and get rid of me. (Example: for one LinkStation to recognize the other for network backup, they cannot have consecutive ip addresses! - the problem here was actually the fileshare option described above.) By sheer luck, the 5th guy I got through to was extremely polite and helpful, and sorted the issues out without any problem.
Summary: Do NOT buy these products unless you have a pretty good idea of what you are doing, and are willing to wade through a series of halfwitted tech support nonces to get to someone who actually understands their own products.