Buffalo LinkStation Pro 2TB review

Buffalo’s 2TB LinkStation Pro is a sleek single-disk NAS that’s about the same size as your average router. Unlike larger NAS devices, it isn’t designed to be opened or upgraded. On its back panel are a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB2 port, which let you connect an additional drive to boost the NAS’s capacity. There’s also a switch that lets you choose between on, off and auto modes, the latter option allowing the NAS to power down when it isn’t being accessed and automatically power back up as soon as a connected PC tries to browse its contents.

The provided installation disc makes setup and configuration as easy as possible for Mac and Windows users. A big, friendly install button maps the NAS as a network drive before prompting you to install Buffalo’s NAS Navigator configuration tool. It also gives you the option of installing utilities such as Network-USB Navigator, which automatically detects and provides access to USB drives when you connect them to the NAS; TurboPC, which is purported to increase transfer speeds between the NAS and your PC; TurboCopy, which makes similar claims of making Windows file copies faster and NovaBackup, a backup scheduler.

NovaBackup is the most overtly useful of these tools, and it provides a simple, wizard-based interface that lets you select your entire system drive, personal files or any other combination of directories to be backed up fully or incrementally. Advanced option settings let you enable features such as virus scanning, and set up a regular backup schedule.

We were also pleased to find that we could immediately detect the NAS on our network and access its web interface from our browser without installing any software at all. The web interface gives you all the tools you need to configure your NAS, from formatting its hard disk to creating users and giving them different access privileges.