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Buffalo LinkStation Home Server HS-D300GLBuffalo's 300GB home server combines lots of capacity with media streaming. Price:
$299
by Billy Ristle 
Buffalo is out to cover all the bases in home- and small-office storage, and the 300GB Gigabit LinkStation Home Server lands smack in the center of the company's lineup, offering less than its RAID-enabled TeraStation series but much more than an ordinary USB-based external drive. It's a solid solution for those looking to share files across a network with little effort.
This LinkStation's claim to fame is its built-in DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified server, able to stream multimedia files to any DLNA playback device—like Buffalo's own LinkTheater mini Network Media Player—without the assistance of a PC. This tidy, compact unit comes with two USB ports, a somewhat unnecessary clip-on stand, and an internal fan that is wholly inaudible once you move a foot or two from the unit. Buffalo deserves praise for integrating the power supply into the device, thus removing the need for a bulky transformer brick. The drive includes Memeo backup software, and you can automatically back up from the LinkStation's internal drive to an attached USB drive, which is a smart perk. Users who wish to purchase two units can back up from one LinkStation to the other for redundancy—a more dubious value considering the more affordable options of internal or USB drives. Buffalo's browser-based setup screens are simple and effective, providing everything from management of the integrated print server to user and group settings. We created a 500MB folder stocked with hundreds of small multimedia, HTML, and assorted office application files. Over a 100-Mbps connection, the folder copied to the LinkStation in 7 minutes and 52 seconds, or a speed of roughly 8.5 Mbps, which is about average for drives in this category. Stepping up to a Gigabit Ethernet connection dropped the write time to 6 minutes and 29 seconds, or approximately 10.3 Mbps. We found a few annoying quirks with the LinkStation Home Server. For example, we wish you could use external USB drives plugged into the unit with the shared FTP service. Moreover, at a time when consumer-class network storage products are becoming increasingly sharing friendly, Buffalo's FTP implementation is overly technical and poorly explained. Overall, the LinkStation Home Server is a good product, delivering backup and media serving capabilities along with lots of storage. However, our top pick in this category is still the Iomega StorCenter, which comes with 50GB less capacity but offers all of the same key features for $70 less. Compare Prices | Buffalo LinkStation Home Server HS-D300GL Specifications
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