BUFFALO LinkStation 210 2TB 1-Bay NAS Network Attached Storage with HDD Hard Drives Included NAS Storage that Works as Home Cloud or Network Storage Device for Home

Great NAS for making yourself a cloud storage location that only you control. Buffalo systems are very reliable, very basic interface, easy to configure. Compatible with Windows and Linux for file copies and backup operations.

I have a small photography business as well as a techno geek. I also have a PC, but assume they will work just as well with Mac. I Believe in having at least 3 backups for my photos and other critical data so besides the cloud, I wanted to have a local copy. I started with one 4Tb drive and now have 5. All of them are Buffalo Link Stations. (Please note if I would have know how much storage I need I may have gone a different route). I have 2-4Tb drives and 2-6Tb drives. Installation was easy. I connected them to my network switch, turned them on and after a few minutes to boot, they were on line and discoverable. Besides my desk top PC, I also have 2-Surface Tables that can access the drives. The software that comes with the drives helps with any configuration you want to do, Including if you want to backup to another drive, though I found this to be a little clunky and the backup program I use does a better job. Also, you may want to go in the config and turn off the trash can storage, as this could be a pain if you delete a lot of data as it does take up space. I found that I would run out of space when I did automatic backup and cleaning. All in all a very good drive for a small home business or just to store critical data

I see that some people have made this work, but I am not one of the lucky ones. First of all, it was painfully slow. I tried an initial full backup from my Windows 10 PC, using Perfect Backup. My PC has a wired Ethernet connection. The size of the data was less than 25 GB. It took five hours to complete. I tried a simple transfer of a 90 MB file. That took several minutes, as it crept along at 350 kB/s most of the time. It's like they stuck an inferior drive in the case and shipped it. The software is a joke. NAS Navigator2 starts out with a reasonable-looking application window, but if you select Settings for your drive you get thrown into the browser interface, where every operation you try, even the simplest ones, results in a 'wait' cursor for several seconds. If you add a new folder on the drive, in order to set permissions on it you must start at the beginning and reconfirm the permissions on all the other folders until you get to the new one. There is no way--unless it's well hidden--to just select a folder and operate on it. I downloaded the latest version but it behaves just the same. The WebAccess app is as bad. If you want to open the drive to see your folders, be prepared to watch it go round and round for at least five seconds, while it displays the message "Processing..." How cute. You'll go through this again if you then open a folder. As for the bundled NovaBACKUP software license, the version that you get with that is ten years old, and you must pay NovaStor's subscription rate for an update. A ten-year-old application would be okay if it worked, but I found it completely useless. It could not see the drive on the network to set it as destination. In fact the only option in the pull-down for device type was "xSP Account", meaning NovaStor's cloud. This may be related to Windows 10's absolute refusal to show any network devices under "Network", but there is no workaround to discover a device using its UNC path, which is how I got Perfect Backup to work. I'm returning this and looking for something that will perform decently.

I was looking for a NAS drive to replace an old, OLD Maxtor 200gb system that was failing. This was perfect! I connected it to the network, ran the included software and was up and running in about 5 minutes. This is on a 5 workstation network and I'm using it to store all shared files and also doing a nightly backup on every workstation. Highly recommend! UPDATE: 4/21/23. This drive failed after 9 months. I filed an RMA claim which they honored. I received the replacement drive today and it's defective. The drive has an audible clicking that after many years in the computer business I recognized as a failed mechanical hard drive. This is exactly what the one I sent in did. As far as I can tell they put a new serial number on the one I sent back and returned it to me. This company is dishonest and you should NOT do business with them! UPDATE 5/2/23. I contacted the company and they agreed to replace the second defective drive, shipping the replacement at their expense and sending a return shipping label as well. I have upgraded the review to 4 stars. The product performs well. I have a second one that has never given me a problem.

I've been doing HD backups for my personal use and home office for 30 years. Since 2020, I've been using Buffalo LinkStations. One criterion that I used in selecting Buffalo is that it can simultaneously support both Mac (TimeMachine) and Windows (simple drive mount + copy) backups to different partitions. It does this, reliably. Workhorse backup is over WiFi, and it's slow but usually dependable. I've had a number of these drives over the years - mean time to failure has always exceeded the warranty so far. Note to casual users from someone who's been in The Business: Do not use one backup drive. The time you find out it's not working is the time you need it. I have 2-3 and swap them out every month or so. Keep one in another location if you can. NEVER EVER EVER use a backup drive as your sole repository for anything important. I also use cloud backup as an alternative just in case (i.e. a home fire, burglary), but restoration of terabytes from cloud would be extremely slow. ALL drives fail so don't let that hurt you. Quirks: Buffalo is a Japanese company. I used to work in software for a major Japanese company, and Japanese software design is, well, um.... DIFFERENT. Let's just say non-intuitive. That said, once you figure it out Buffalo's software is actually really good. In fact the best I have dealt with. Software from other manufactures is sometimes totally clueless as to what their users need or even downright hostile. Also the documentation... good luck with that. Think of it as a puzzle you are solving for a prize. I just ordered two more and thought it was about time I did a review.

The installation is fairly simple, and the Ikea-like Quick Setup Guide is quite adequate for making the initial setup easy. The problem I encountered was using the software to configure the unit. It failed to find the unit but gave no errors or clues about what might be wrong. The claim was that the support is great so I thought it would be moderately easy to get an answer. I was wrong. I found the support page on their website but the only telephone option was to call sales. The victim must enter the serial number of the unit which is not all that easy to find. I entered my number and was directed to enter a message to support. I received no acknowledgement that my support query had been accepted so I kept searching on the interweb for possible reasons for my unit not being detected and found that it had to be on the same subnet. After rearranging my network, I was able to configure the unit but then could not create the shares with various issues. I found an article about having to create Windows credentials and that got me closer but still no joy. I had registered my unit as a first step. As I was trying to research the issue, I received an email telling me that my warranty had been accepted. I went back to their support page and, this time, after entering my serial number I was given a support telephone number to call. The support person was helpful and knowledgeable. He corrected the settings being still set to being DISABLED which he indicated were the default. I still have a hard time believing that the unit comes with the shares being disabled but it works, now. Buffalo needs to improve the software side of the installation and give their victims hints and guidance about what may be causing issues. I have installed the backup software, but it seems rather lame and ineffective. Hopefully, it is better than it appears on first blush.

Exceeds expectations so far. All I really wanted was a basic network storage drive for my home office so I can have that magic "L:" drive or whatever accessible by all my machines on the network can map to for central location storage location for test data, business admin data, personal data, whatever. Being my first NAS I decided to go with this less-expensive model (without RAID) as a low-risk intro, and so far I'm very impressed. Bonus Features: This is probably why most other people buy this thing, but I like the idea of it doubling as a media server for the whole home wifi network also. NOTES for PC users - read this and it might save you a few minutes: -I noticed some negative comments about the setup, and it can be a little misleading. It actually came with a cd/dvd, and the setup instructions (which ironically you don't really end up needing) said you're supposed to run the driver setup from the dvd (as if everyone still has a dvd drive!). Not having dvd drive I downloaded the software from Buffalo support site, and it said "it couldn't find a device on the network that needs updating". To me this sounded like it couldn't find the drive, but after getting a little frustrated and researching it turns out the firmware was just already up-to-date. Logging into my router admin I could see the device just fine and get its IP, and the admin tool accessible by typing the ip into a browser is nice and intuitive (if you're remotely familiar with basic pc/networking concepts). It is there where I started looking around at features and discovered I can plug a usb storage device right into this thing AND easily set up backup jobs from the drive to the storage drive. Also cool I can actually see the USB drive from that network share also - pretty sweet and versatile looking. Overall I give it a 4.7 out of 5.0 so (-0.1 for slightly misleading instructions, and -0.2 because it actually had a dvd come with it! lol)

Absolutely amazing experience thus far, it's been around 2-3~ years with this product and I've had little to zero issues. It does randomly crash and need restart maybe once every like six months, but no data corruption occurs and it handles power outages great.

LinkStation LS210DE19 – 2T byte single drive NAS I started using NAS well over 10 years ago. My first NAS (which is still in use is a Buffalo LS-GL284 250 Gbytes) and is around 90%+ full. So then I bought a second Buffalo NAS LS-XLFA8 2T byte unit a few years back but it has become intermittent with an overheating problem causing frequent shutdowns. The files I store on the NAS are not that critical BUT I still wouldn’t like to lose them. Consequently I decided to turf the XLFA8 2T unit and buy a new LinkStation LS210DE19 – 2T byte single drive NAS (and also because it was on sale). As a lot of other reviews state – setup is “not easy” but once set up the NAS does what it’s supposed to do. The instruction sheet that comes with the unit for set-up is less than useless and the CD…. well, it does make a good coffee coaster. I found the “Online Manual” for the NAS to be excellent but at 133 pages in length “ya gotta have patience”. I actually found it a good reference manual after I figured out how to set up the NAS. I set up the NAS using NAS NAVIGATOR2 to find it’s IP address on my LAN and then used the NAS management GUI to perform the setup. After about 6 hours the NAS was up and flying. The area’s I configured on the NAS were the: • Basics – Time, NAS Name, etc • Power management schedule • Local User Names and their privileges • Files folders, their shares and Access Restrictions • Network IP, etc • WebAccess to the NAS (I use an Android phone and the Buffalo WebAccess app) So as can be seen, there are a lot of area’s that I have not set up (RAID / BACKUPS / FTP /DLNA / BitTorrent) and a bunch of other stuff which do not use currently. I did use the NAS “USB Direct Copy” which worked well (good explanation in online manual) and NAS WebAccess on an Android phone was straight forward to set up. File transfer rates on my LAN are about 8-10 megabits /sec. For my type of activity this is OK but others would call this rate very slow. (File transfer rates via WebAccess were/are much faster!!) My final conclusions are that the NAS is a good unit, serves my purpose, is priced OK and I would recommend it to others. Now, if you are new to all of this IP stuff then – “get some help” to set it up.

muy bueno

El producto tardo mucho pero llego bien. Las instrucciones no venían en español ni en cualquier otro idioma porque eran inexistentes, hubo que buscarse la vida en internet. Después de un mes intentando configurar el dispositivo ME RINDO. La devolución me cuesta un pastón ya que hay que devolverlo a mi cargo por transporte internacional. Me he bajado instrucciones, muy malos tutoriales todos en ingles americano casi incomprensibles para mi. No digo que el producto sea malo puesto que me ha sido imposible configurarlo y usarlo, pero desde luego no es nada fácil de usar.

For what it is, perfect! A NAS with only one disk is not a complete solution, because there is no built-in resilience or recovery system. That did not matter, because I have 4 other 4TB drives linked to 4 PCs, and this is simply a central repository. The big advantage is that it is always on, 24x7, when the PC's are NOT. It is therefore available for update/interrogation from various mobile devices. A full NAS solution would have cost at least twice the price, and most of its functions would have been redundant. It came with a US power supply, but luckily a retired UK unit worked perfectly.

Justo lo que esperaba, lo co ecte a mi red de oficina con switc gigabit y es rápido, y el dlna funciona excelente, lo recomiendo, aparte de todo. Es silencioso