Buffalo LinkStation Pro Quad 4TB review

The Buffalo LinkStation Pro Quad is a four-disk network attached storage (NAS) device. Despite its four 1TB disks and sturdy metal construction, the Pro Quad is compact and quiet, so you don’t have to stash it away out of sight unless you really want to.

The Pro Quad’s four disks can be configured as RAID 0 giving 4TB of storage, but if a disk fails you’ll lose all your data. Alternatively, it can be configured as RAID 5 which gives 3TB of storage and your data will still be safe if one disk fails. RAID 10 is also an option – up to two disks can fail here and your data will still be safe but only 2TB of storage is available. Replacing a disk in the event of disk failure is straightforward – pulling off the front panel reveals four easily accessible disk bays. Each disk is screwed inside a disk tray which slides smoothly in and out of each bay.

We’re used to seeing a NAS transfer files at very different speeds depending on the chosen type of RAID array, but the Pro Quad’s speeds were surprisingly consistent no matter the RAID level. Large files were written at just under 29MB/s and were read at just over 40MB/s – both of which are very quick speeds. Unfortunately small files performance was substantially slower at around 4MB/s both when writing and reading.

Configuring the Pro Quad is straightforward thanks to a friendly utility to find the NAS on the network and a logically-organised web interface, whose tabbed interface makes it quick and easy to find the option you’re looking for. User accounts can be created quickly and there are options for setting usage quotas and organising accounts into groups for easier administration. To prevent accidental data erasure, the interface requires you to retype a Captcha-style onscreen numeric code before changing your RAID array type.

The Pro Quad has numerous features which make it much more than just a file server. We had no trouble using it as an iTunes music server or to share a USB laser printer and the contents of a USB drive across our network. The front USB port is recessed which could make plugging in chunky USB drives and cables tricky, although this is fixed easily enough by simply removing the front panel, so making the port more accessible, or using a small USB extension cable. Streaming video stored on the Quad Pro over our network wasn’t quite as trouble-free as we hoped. HD video often dropped frames unless we paused the video first for a minute or two to let it buffer.

Files stored on the Pro Quad can be accessed remotely from any internet-connected computer. This can be done by configuring the Pro Quad as an FTP server, although it’s simpler to use the NAS’s web interface, or the iOS or Android apps, instead. Both methods may require adjusting your router’s firewall.

There’s a lot of like about the LinkStation Pro Quad, from its quiet operation and slew of useful extra features to its low 9p cost per gigabyte. Unfortunately the very slow small files performance means some file transfer jobs will need to be left running overnight, so we can’t recommend it unconditionally.