Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Good product for the price (paid $404 from Amazon). The price attracted me to this, since the "real" RAID 5 solution w/o performance issues are around ~$600~$800 w/o the hard drives. Bought it to protect my distributed data around 5 computers, and enough performance to keep all the files from the computers on the networked NAS drive, and protected.
RAID 1 (mirroring) was not my preference, and RAID 5 (parity, N+1 protection) was, which limited my choices to quad drive models.
Positives
- Easy management via browser, reasonable security and read/write privilege settings, even without setting up SMB server or equivalent (did not test the SMB server authentication yet).
- DLNA - for those who have DLNA TV, and TV connected to home network, the expected DLNA functions (content discovery, streaming, etc) worked well.
- Worked well with other SATA drives. Originally came w/ 4 x 250 G WD drives, and I put 500 G Maxtor, Seagate, WD, and Samsung drives, and all got recognized and ran without any issues.
- USB expansion -- I have a few of USB drives, that got instantly upgrade to NAS operation by connecting them (2) to this unit. Seems to handle mixed file systems fine: at least for NTFS and FAT32. Power on/off the external units as I need them.
Neutral
- Performance is reasonable -- works near 100% bandwidth in peaks over Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/s), but at Gigabit Ethernet speeds, it only peaks around 150~220 Mb/s. In human perception terms, no noticeable delay using files on NAS for editing or streaming music or video, but copy (e.g. back up) of 500 G data takes about 7~8 hours (compared to local disk to disk copy taking about 1~1.5 hrs).
- Performance during disk fault recovery operation is very good -- When fully operating, I removed a drive (simulated disk fault), and added a different drive (500G). The file server (access, copy from and copy to NAS) degraded performance was NOT noticeable during the fault recovery (as it shouldn't). A large directory copy (~20 G) was measurably noticeable (about 20~25% longer copy time).
- Performance per price point is reasonable that is.
Negatives
- RAID 5 should work on 3 or more drives. LinkStation Quad only supports RAID 5 on 4 drives. So, my original plan of using 3 drives for protected (and recoverable) data (e.g. family photo, work files), and 1 drive for bulk storage media (e.g. mp3 music, family video, etc) is not an option. So I configured RAID 5 over 4 internal drives, and put external USB drive for unprotected bulk storage.
- RAID initialization takes several days, YES, SEVERAL DAYS!. Manual warns about this, and it is true. I had several extra 500G drives, and had uses for 250G drives, so I bought the cheapest LinkStation Quad (1 TB model), and replaced it w/ 500G drives to get 2 TB (raw, before RAID). This replacement forced me to do format and the RAID initialization -- in my case, it took 2.5 days straight. The break down is about 1.5 days for individual drives to be low-level formatted to XFS (for 500G), and about 1 day to get RAID initialized (for 4 x 500 G) RAID 5 mode.
- Major ISSUE for Power users, but minor for casual users: Tested the gradual upgrade of the system capacity -- meaning start w/ 4 x 250 G, and start replacing each drive with 500 G, allowing to recover each time. When all 4 drives are replaced higher capacity drives, the unit SHOULD use higher capacity automatically, but it DID NOT. Had to remove all data, re-init the RAID 5 array (again 1 day), at which time the system reported higher capacity, and then put back the data (again about 1 day for 500 G).
Short Recommendation on selecting models (circa 01/2009) based on Price and Time only:
I bought 1 TB model, because I could use 4 x 250 G on my desktop PCs. But all the headaches and time does not justify the price difference. The 2 TB model is the best option (price, capacity, and upgrading w/ your own drives, all considered) if you have no use for the 4 x 250 G drives. 4 TB model seems to be the same price as if you bought 1 TB model plus 4 separate 1 TB drives (and you end up w/ "free" 4 x 250 GB drives. Again valuable only if you have use for those).
Not yet tested but will test:
- Access to this NAS storage behind home router from my work that has both firewall (incoming and outgoing), using both Buffalo's portal as well as fixed IP configuration. If this works well, my extended family could pull family photos directly from my home server, and I could access my personal documents on this NAS from work!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Buffalo Technology LinkStation Quad 4 TB (4 X 1 TB) Network Attached Storage LS-Q4.0TL/R5(Black)
Linkstaton Quad Nas 4tb 4x1tbPerpsata Raid Gbe 5 Web Access Dlna
