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.