Reviews - Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL NAS review

[HEXUS]

In need of centralised storage for the home? We take a look at Buffalo's sub-£150 solution.

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[miniyazz]

I do want a NAS, but it'd need to have space for 4+ drives and perhaps have a wireless card, for probably <£150 before I'd be sufficiently tempted to buy. Drive-free, of course. I think I may be asking too much

[Brewster0101]

I do want a NAS, but it'd need to have space for 4+ drives and perhaps have a wireless card, for probably <£150 before I'd be sufficiently tempted to buy. Drive-free, of course. I think I may be asking too much

For less than £150... You don't want much do you

Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL is nice, but you can get NAS units with two drive bays for around £100, plus add one 1tb drive and your around £140. Ok, they are not that fast at that price but fast enough for most.

The Synology DS211j is £160 on its own and then add £40 for a 1tb drive and you have a two drive box which is as fast and much more feature rich, also two drive bays.

I think the Buffalo LinkStation Pro LS-VL sits inbetween the above two options.

[miniyazz]

I wouldn't need it to be a particularly fast or feature-rich NAS, or even to support RAID - all I want is for a load of drives to appear in My Computer as though I plugged them into my laptop through USB
So tbh I could probably cope with a DAS. But prices really do shoot up after the second drive bay, and I've roughly 7TB in four drives that I'd want to put in, so upgrading the drive capacity to fit everything in two drives isn't really an option.

Ah well, I guess I'm happy enough plugging them in one or two at a time, as required, at the moment! :/

[Moby-Dick]

the closest I know of is the ReadyNas NV+ . but thats not wireless and comes in at about £200 for a diskless 4 bay job.

[crossy]

Don't like this device - Windows-specific is an immediate no-no for me (although I'm pretty sure it'll work with Linux).
Definitely don't like the price - £150 for a 1TB unit is hopeless when, for example, PC World have a WD My Book World 1TB for a list of £129 and a reduced price of £99.
Okay, the MBW is far from perfect - but it works - and you get backup software etc with it. In fact, if PCW prices are the benchmark, then the Buffalo is way overpriced. There's 2TB drives available for less - and PCW have the Iomega IX2-200 (2 x 1TB drives) for £189, which is quite tempting.

I do want a NAS, but it'd need to have space for 4+ drives and perhaps have a wireless card, for probably <£150 before I'd be sufficiently tempted to buy. Drive-free, of course. I think I may be asking too much

Hmm, I'm wondering if (minus the WLAN option) you could get close to this price point by using some cheap-as-chips Mini-ITX board, along with similarly cheap case, etc.

If you figure out how to do that for the price, then let the rest of us know, since I'm willing to bet that there's more than just you who'd be interested in something that aggressively priced.

[Moby-Dick]

I can't see you building anything half as solid as the readynas - which might only be £50 more , but its a really neat and well build bit of kit.

[Brewster0101]

I wouldn't need it to be a particularly fast or feature-rich NAS, or even to support RAID - all I want is for a load of drives to appear in My Computer as though I plugged them into my laptop through USB
So tbh I could probably cope with a DAS. But prices really do shoot up after the second drive bay, and I've roughly 7TB in four drives that I'd want to put in, so upgrading the drive capacity to fit everything in two drives isn't really an option.

Ah well, I guess I'm happy enough plugging them in one or two at a time, as required, at the moment! :/

Netgear do a cheap 2 drive NAS box for £65. Get two of them together and a cheap wireless router and you've ticked all your boxes.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225067

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190031

[miniyazz]

Hmm, I'm wondering if (minus the WLAN option) you could get close to this price point by using some cheap-as-chips Mini-ITX board, along with similarly cheap case, etc.

If you figure out how to do that for the price, then let the rest of us know, since I'm willing to bet that there's more than just you who'd be interested in something that aggressively priced.

I can't see you building anything half as solid as the readynas - which might only be £50 more , but its a really neat and well build bit of kit.

That's the thing, really. I've briefly looked into building my own and yes, it could be cheaper, but it wouldn't be as neat or as tidy and I don't really have the time at the moment to figure out what I'd need to do on the software front. It'd probably be pretty easy but at the end of the day there'd be only a small difference in price for something which just isn't quite as good/easy to use as a ready-made solution.

Netgear do a cheap 2 drive NAS box for £65. Get two of them together and a cheap wireless router and you've ticked all your boxes.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225067

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190031

That's quite tempting actually. I hesitate because it seems silly to use two (three) devices when I should really be able to integrate them all into one, more portable, device. But good thought

[crossy]

Is it just me, or does it look suspiciously like Buffalo has deliberately designed this thing to look like an XBox360? If so, why?

That's the thing, really. I've briefly looked into building my own and yes, it could be cheaper, but it wouldn't be as neat or as tidy and I don't really have the time at the moment to figure out what I'd need to do on the software front. It'd probably be pretty easy but at the end of the day there'd be only a small difference in price for something which just isn't quite as good/easy to use as a ready-made solution.

I had a look at this, and if you're dedicated to Windows then there's nothing really available. On the other hand, if you're willing to hack around then a combination of FreeNAS with either Rygel or minidlna.

The hardware was pretty easy to spec - Fractal Designs do a pretty nice looking NAS case (the R2) that's got 6 bays; and Jetway do a dual-core Atom mobo that can be expanded to six SATA ports, with 4 of those with hardware RAID support. Trouble is price - those two items, plus a 2GB RAM module, is about £250 ex VAT. And there's still the small matter of drives to be bought...

Although I guess you could save some money by not having such a fancy case - if you go for a 4-bay budget case then you can conceivably bring that lot in under the £200 mark. And then all that remains of your original spec is wireless - cheap PCI 802.11n card and that can be ticked off the list.

Other downsides (obviously) are that while this'd be very flexible, you'd have to maintain the software (no nice "click to update" process); and I guess noise could be an issue - but I've not heard a competing 4-bay NAS to be able to tell.

I'm actually starting to talk myself into doing that build ...

[abaxas]

I can't see you building anything half as solid as the readynas - which might only be £50 more , but its a really neat and well build bit of kit.

These appear to be 1.6ghz arm with 256? In the scheme of things is an absolute beast of a computer.

When the 'duo' version arrives, I'll be tempted to invest.

[Moby-Dick]

These appear to be 1.6ghz arm with 256? In the scheme of things is an absolute beast of a computer.

When the 'duo' version arrives, I'll be tempted to invest.

Correct , the base model does use sparc , which limits the plugin range a little , though I've not found anything I have wanted but coudn't get.The ultra version is atom based. Upgrading the Ram to 1GB ( though upsupported) took about 3 mins and £20