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The 1TB Linkstation Duo arrives in a rather bright and colourful box which details the main functionality of the device as well as an image on the right.
The back of the box serves as a basic unit overview inside a store environment and will prove useful to those browsing in PCworld.
The package contains a power adapter, UK and European plug, a converter, as well as a cat cable for hooking up to your network.
The Buffalo unit is a very plain design with a plastic fascia on the front with several lights, showing power and link status. The rear is home to a fan, power and reset switches and the network connection.
The chassis is sturdy enough and seems to be able to withstand some general abuse without falling apart, even if it is built to a very tight budget. Underneath is a serial number and MAC address.
Getting access to the drives is straightforward, you unclip the plastic fascia at the front and each drive is available for removal.
There are two round pulley bars which remove the drives from the sata and power headers inside the chassis. Once these click free you can slide them out easily enough by hand – there is a little plastic retainer underneath each drive which needs to be forced down slightly. The drives inside are high quality 500GB Samsung models. We would assume that Buffalo have struck a deal with Samsung for the supply of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB drives for these NAS systems.
The controller board is at the end of the rail system as seen in the image above. It is a simple little board and there is a fan behind this to ensure a decent flow of air.
Well this seems like a really good low cost way to get into NAS systems 🙂
Yeah its not the fastest unit, but for the price, its really a good buy, especially for more casual users, rather than hardcore guys.
Thats such a good price, the Synology tempted me, but with 1tb of storage its over 500 quid. thats a lot of money. I would be willing to live with lower performance.
Wow I was stunned at the price. the drives alone are almost half of the asking price. Can you upgrade the 1TB unit later with bigger drives?
Funnily enough I was looking at this unit last week with the possiblity of upgrading my own ancient NAS system which is falling apart. I tend to backup documents and videos. I just ordered one , thanks for the review
Read performance is decent, write is a little slow. I like the price, but im not sure how it would handle bigger files. that might be painful to wait at times.
The controller is obviously not an expensive model, which means its not able to saturate the network, but its still quite decent really.
It is not fast enough for me unfortunately, I copy over a lot of files at 10GB or more, 1080p MKVs/ the wait would be painful. but I agree, its a nice pricing point.
That is really inexpensive, didnt think you could get a full NAS system for that price. It would be fine for me, im not into mega network speeds, my network is crappy anyway 🙂
Hey Zardon maybe you could write an article on how to set up a gigabit network, yours looks rather impressive!
Performance is average but the price point is hard to complain about 🙂
I just ordered two of them, one for my brother for his birthday and one for myself :p
Thats a really inexpensive option ! I shall pick one of these up for backups over the network, when speed isnt really that critical.
great review, many nice tests which are real world and useful. I think this is a good option, really cheap too. shall get one.
I was a little disappointed with performance, but I saw the price and its really so little money for a NAS system. with USB option too? Think I might pick one up too for a present for my cousin.
try the speed tests again with differnt hardrives in there? some WD black’s
junk, the onboard controller is trash and creates trash out of your data
Thanks for a great review. Looking to buy one of these to replace a Buffalo Linkstation Live that has recently died. I have been pleased with the Linkstation so it sounds like this will provide similar service. Not the fastest around but great for the price.