Network storage (Buffalo) at home, any bargains out there?

Daniel_B

Hello all,

I have already searched the forum, and found a few threads on this, but thought a specific one might be a good idea.

I have a stock USB external hard drive (160GB) which does a stirling job, but I need a means of backing up this data, and also would like to be able ot network share it as well.

I also do a bit of downloading, so the Buffalo linkstation live jumps out as a good candidate, and seems to get good reviews.

Amazon seem to have the 500GB for £119.99 (Was £170 yesterday I think) but yesterday Play had the 640GB version for £129.99,. but now up to £189.99

Kikatek reportedly have the 1TB version for £165, but are awaiting stock.

Just wondered if anybody else had spotted any bargains, or if anyone spots the prices on these going up and preferably down, they could post on here, and I will do likewise.

I was set on the 500GB version, but then seeing the 640 for £10 more made that better value, but then seeing the 1TB made even more sense!

Can anyone who has one confirm that you can stream video over a WLAN from one of these onto a laptop? (I realise the actual unit has to connect via ethernet to the router)

Any other recommendations for alternatives?

I like the torrent feature, and the wake up feature on the Buffalo, and the vast array of good reviews, and also the price, so I'm not looking at spending much over £150, and am looking for between 500GB - 1TB of storage.

Cheers

Dan

interceptor02

No experience of Buffalo but did a lot of research before I brough my NAS drive. I brought about three cheap ones and they were rubbish in the end brought a synology DS108J which is brill. Easy to setup and the interface is great and very good support if you need it. Expensive I know but it does the job. I thinking about upgrading to a Synology DS107+ because in the next version of firmware it will include a mail server function.

I noticed the price of NAS is increasing not deceasing, I suppose due to the pound\dollar.

Daniel_B

Hi Interceptor,

I see the price of the enclosure is around £120, and 1TB HDD's can be had from around £70, so a bit mor ethan I was thinking of, but not totally out of bounds.

As you know it well, can you tell me what it gives me ove rthe Buffalo?
The Buffalo enables you to create shares/set permissions, plus it has a built in torrent client, and a wake up facility.

What does the synergy provide over and above this?

For example, is it possible to connect it via cable to a TV, and play video files on your TV?
That would make it almost a media station, and would, for me, justify the additional expense.

Where did you get yours from?

Cheers

Dan

timbim_2

If you get your own drives to go in an enclosure, then at least you know what's in there, you can always rescue the drives should the enclousure go up the spout, and drives can be replaced at any time as well. Usually better quality down that route as well.

iamwildthing

The Buffalo NAS drives are very good, I have one that I now use quite a lot.
I bought it initially as a backup device but I now use to transfer data between the computers in my house.
One suggestion though, make sure you check the different models as the different ones have different features.

DocHants

I personally find all NAS offer appauling transfer sppeeds... even those that have a "gigabit" interface which should offer tehoretical speeds of upto 125MBps, in reality, offer less than doube 100mb (12.5MBps) sppeds. The fastest affordbale home NAS I have seen struggled to peak around 20MBps, which is just shocking really... I have faster usb sticks!!! The only possible thing they have going for them is their size... I have since built a small storage server, stuck it in a cupboard, and enjoy in excess of 70MBps transfer speeds..., oh, and I can use it as a computer too!!

interceptor02

As you know it well, can you tell me what it gives me ove rthe Buffalo?
The Buffalo enables you to create shares/set permissions, plus it has a built in torrent client, and a wake up facility.

Yes it has all those features and drag and drop on torrent.

What does the synergy provide over and above this?
I don't know. I didn't do a compare. I just read all the problems that Buffalo had.
All the features are at http://www.synology.com
However, the firmware is regularly updated with new features.


For example, is it possible to connect it via cable to a TV, and play video files on your TV?

Don't know could do via USB

That would make it almost a media station, and would, for me, justify the additional expense.

Yes its one of the best NAS around read the reviews. worth every penny

Where did you get yours from?
Novatech I paid £87 last August 2008. It gone up in price since then

Daniel_B

Thanks for all those replies,

£87 is a very good deal, however the cheapest now seems ot be more like £120, not sure I am willing to go that far, as nice as the features are.

I have since seen this Dual bay SATA netowork enclosure that seems rather good value: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=226732

Am thinking I can get 1TB of network storage up and running for around £155, and then either upgrade it to 2TB later on, or a 1TB mirror setup.

Any comments?

Dan

Daniel_B

Hello all,

thought it might be worth updating this post incase anyone searches on a similar topic.

In the end I decided the buffalo was too much money, and although the synology was nice, it didn't offer me enough for the money.

So in the end I plumped for the maplin dual sata enclosure for £77 delivered

And a 1TB Samsung spinpoint drive from ebuyer for £80 delivered, which has excellent reviews.

What I will do if it all works ok, is purchase a 2nd 1TB samsung drive, and run them mirrored, so if one fails I have another copy, and can replace the faulty drive.

Just set it up tonight, and it's pretty much a cinch, plug it into your router, connect via a web browser page, set up the usernames, setup the shares, and you can map to them straight away, it's pretty slick.

I tested playing video straight off it over the WLAN, and it played fine, no jerkiness or audio issues, top notch.

Only downsides are that it's a little bit noisy, am pretty sure that is the enclosure fan rather than the hdd, but this won't be a probem when I relocate the phone line/modem/enclosure to under the stairs.

It's a bit slow to copy data, but this is probably down to my ageing netgear router and WLAN rather than the device, but once it is done, then it will just be a case of updates as and when, so I will leave it copying some stuff overnight, I have around 160GB of data to copy over, so I should expect it to take a while.......

Cheers

Dan

Leopard

Thanks for posting your experience; it was interesting and helpful.

If one's router has a USB2 port, an alternative and less expensive network storage option is to plug an ordinary USB2 external hard drive into that.

I bought a £70 (delivered) 1 TB USB2 Toshiba hard drive from eBuyer and my Apple Airport Extreme networked it with no problems.

Daniel_B

Hi Leopard,

that's a bloomin good idea, alas my netgear router has no usb port, but a handy mse tip that hadn't occurred to me. How do you create the shares, and how do you connect to the drive on the WLAN, via IP address?

I only realised today that the drive was formatted as FAT32 :rolleyes: so currently running an NTFS format, but only at 20% so far....

Weird occurrence earlier this evening, both laptops on the WLAN and showing good connection, but only getting 169 auto config addresses, rebooted the router which fixed it, but a bit strange. I have since assigned a fixed address from the router so am hoping this will resolve the problem - I'll update in due course.

Cheers

Dan