Customer Reviews

Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB Network External Storage Center HD-H250LAN

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased this device some months back. It's not as fast as I'd have liked, but it's a marked improvement over the Maxtor Shared Storage Drive NAS, which was so incredibly slow I had to send it back. (At the time I bought it, this 250 gb drive cost MORE than the Maxtor 300 gb NAS unit, BTW.) It works tolerably, though I have experienced the hesitations others here have mentioned. (I have NO trouble with real long file names, though. None at all.) Eventually, I filled the thing up, but that's not a problem because according to the marketing info I could buy a large gb USB2 external drive, attach it to the LinkStation and commence to steppin', right? Well yes, BUT... What Buffalo doesn't tell you ANYWHERE--not even in the manual--is that when you add an external drive, it becomes available as a SINGLE share point only, named USBDrive1 (unchangeable), and that IT IS NOT ABLE TO HAVE ANY OF THE ALREADY-LIMITED SECURITY FEATURES OF THE MAIN UNIT. I found this out by calling Buffalo.

This is completely useless, stupid and duplicitous on Buffalo's part. I bought the unit with the expectation that I could expand it and the expansion space would either integrate itself into the main pool of disk space or would at least behave like the rest of the unit, allowing me to "parition" it into share points of my choosing that I could assign drive letters to. Who needs a 300 gb pool of disk space that you can't keep ANYONE out of? And you can only add ONE external drive, at that. My only option here is to buy another LinkStation altogether and tie up another port on my switch. I certainly could use it, but I'm not sure Buffalo deserves any more of my money after this.

From what I've been reading, there IS no decent, fast, well-thought out NAS unit priced for the home/small business market. I think Buffalo's TeraStation is way too expensive for home use, and from the reviews I've read it's not appreciably better than the LinkStation, anyway.

I didn't want to have to build a PC and screw around with Microsoft's interminable security BS just to have large mass storage at my disposal, but it looks like that's the only choice there is, which is really disappointing.

i regret the acquisition of this waste of time. it fails to accept files from either windows or osx if the filename is longer than a ridiculously short default, it's as slow as molasses, and it's bloody noisy to boot. also buffalo technical support is pathetic.

mine is for sale once i wipe its disk ...

Although the manufacturer says it is Mac compatible and supplies a separate Mac setup guide, the device has a 32-character file name limitation! That means that you can't really copy or backup your Mac files to the Linkstation if any of them have long filenames.

So for my purposes, this is pretty much a worthless device and I returned it the same day it arrived.

I bought this 6 weeks ago to serve as an MP3 fileserver for my 2 Squeezeboxes so I wouldn't have to keep my PC running all of the time. The main draw was that it would use little power and be quiet.

Up until now, it has been both of those things. Unfortunately, it has gotten a lot noisier lately - buzzy. I did some searches on LinkStation Wiki forums and it turns out this is a common problem, whose source is either a cheap fan and mounts or a cheap back panel that vibrates or both. I have an email in to BuffTech, but it seems like unhelpful tech support is another common complaint.

3 stars because it does function well, is very flexible with all of the geek tweaks out there (as long as you're willing to invest some time) and it doesn't seem like it has any real competition. Too bad it doesn't deliver on the quiet part.

I just got off the phone with Buffalo Tech Support (took 10 minutes to get a service rep) and found out that my Hewlett Packard Photosmart printer is NOT supported through the USB Print Server interface of this device because it's not a Postscript printer. When you go to the Print Server setup, there is a drop-down option for "Postscript" and then 19 model choices for the Epson "PM" and "LP" series line of printers. According to Jeremy, the service rep on the phone, those are all Postscript printers and that's the only type of printer this drive can support. Even though that's not very consistent with the CD-ROM manual which says, "If a non-PostScript printer is connected to LinkStation, then select a compatible printer from the `Printer Type' pull down menu. Other settings will have to be set based on the printer's documentation. If a printer is not available from the pull down menu, then it is not supported by LinkStation."

I am still getting this thing set up so I can't yet rate it on its other features, but do beware if you are looking to use this as a print server. So far I really like the rest of the features that it claims to have, so we'll see how those work out.

I have a 3 year old PC and was desperate for space. My boss saw this in a store and recommended it to me. This is a beauty! Setup was very easy, as was mapping the drive and transfering data. Printing from a networked laptop is very convenient.

I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 for 2 reasons:

1. While Buffalo has 24/7 tech support, I spent over an hour on hold waiting for support at 7am on a Sunday morning. I ended up haging up and sending email instead, which was answered within 24 hours.

2. The fan runs all the time. Even a computer fan goes to sleep when the drive does. Beware: If you shut off the buffalo to save on your electricity bill, you'll have to remap the network drive.

This was one of the better purchases I have made. I did a lot of digging around and price comparisons for similar products, and went with this one. I don't regret it. I just plugged it in and spent a few minutes changing the security settings, and was off. I definitely recommend this one.

Easy to setup, easy to administer... an easy to setup a back up.. tHIS IS A MUST HAVE FOR ANYONE LOOKING FOR NETWORK STORAGE AND DOES NOT HAVE A SERVER.

Only one complaint.... Password can only be 8 spaces long. Hopefully this will be changed in a future rev. Buffalo Tech seems to have some problems allowing long passwords...

I am sure they will come around, I tried several products and this is the easiest most full featured I have seen.

The installation of the product was smooth. I have followed the instructions and setup was completed successfully... with caveats.

The first problem is your inability to access the linkStation as advertised. Entering \\LinkShare name in your windows explorer gave an error message. Why? Because my firewall was on. Nowhere in instructions it states to turn it off. But that's minor.

The backup software that came with the product simply does not backup the files (even with firewall turned off). I was lucky to get a word from support to download a new file. It wasn't specified which file or how to uninstall the existing backup software - as the uninstall utility does not exist.

Speaking of support: a call on Thursday night resulted in a wait time of 1.5 hours with a disconnect in the end. A call on Friday morning resulted with a support person providing semi helpful advice. A follow-up call on Friday morning is so far one hour waiting with Thursday's outcome projected.

Overall this product is OK for storage - but it's too expensive to be used for such purpose. The support and installation process has wasted my time. Two stars because I have not tried using this for printer sharing. If that fails the product shall get 1 star. Buy it with hope, avoid if don't want to waste your time.

Here is my LinkStation story. I got one in September. Within a month, it stopped responding after 1-7 days of working. I applied to support, and they suggested to replace it, so I sent it back to them. The LinkStation came as a replacement was a used unit, and in addition I had to pay taxes as if it were sent to me (Canada) from Japan, not the US. I complained again, and they suggested me to exchange it with a new box. Just when I decided to leave the used one and do not deal with BuffaloTech anymore, the unit just died and didn't start up. So I sent it again, of course. The second replacement I received was a new box, but it's crashing even more often than the first one, sometimes twice a day. Keep yourself from LinkStation and all the troubles related to this device and its manufacter Buffalo Technology!