BuffaloLS520D0202-EU 2TB (2 x 1TB) LinkStation 520D 2 Bay Desktop NAS

As a complete NAS noob I was not sure what to expect from this unit, but after 3 days of ownership and around 10 hours attampting to get it set up how i want I am left very dis-satisfied. All I wanted to do was remove 2 x 3TB HDD's from my PC which was in use as a home server for TV shows, Movies and Music and install them in the NAS to do the same job. I was happy with every aspect of using my PC as my server but to save power I wanted to turn it off and use something much less power hungry. This is why I chose this particular NAS. Anyway, as a noob I had no previous knowledge of setting up a NAS, so first off I was disappointed to find that to use RAID 0 I would still need to format both HDD's. Very annoying as this meant trying to find space elsewhere to back things up. Anyway, I did that, then fitted the drives (very easy to do). I then plugged it in and downloaded the absolutely rubbish PC software to get the system set up. I configured an admin user, formatted the drives for RAID 0 use and saw that I had 6TB of space to play with. Everything beyond this point became extremely painful and tedious. I attempted to copy my 4TB of data back to the drives using the PC software but it was pitifully inadequate for the job (can only copy 1 file at a time to a max size of 4GB - useless) so I then put my date on some USB HDD's and did the copy that way. This is a lot better, indeed you can copy the entire content of the drive over in one hit just by pressing a button on the NAS, BUT.... the copy speed is terrible even through the alleged USB 3 connection. It takes 24hrs to copy around 1.5TB of mixed media files, compared to around 4 hours to do the same on a Window PC. Anyway, 2 days later I had all of my files copied over and was getting quite excited to start using the thing. On my PC and through the software (NAS navi v293) I set up the files in the Public folders for Music and Video. I checked all settings were correct with the read / write rights etc and all appeared to be good. Again, the software is so horrible and clunky (by the way it only displays correctly in IE11, not Chrome or Edge) that even doing this was slow and painful, anyway I appeared to have got where i wanted.The test was to see if I could access these folders through my LG Smart TV, my PC (through Windows explorer) and through my Samsung smart phone - all though my home wifi network. The results were as follows: All folders appeared correctly on the PC and the Smart TV (not immediately, a few reboots were required until anything could even be seen) BUT many of the folders appeared empty on both of these devices. On the NAS Navi software on the PC all files were correctly in the folders and the contents could be downloaded to the PC that way, but that is not something that works for me. So, mysteriously some folders were empty, some were full. On the smart TV the working folders play the mdia on the screen very well, no lag, no visual or sound issues, so tjhat was good, but at the time of writing I am again copying around 800GB of data back on to the NAS to hopefully fix the missing folders issue.Overall I hope to get this thing working but the sheer amount of time to get it set up is not worth it and I could not advise this to anyone. Indeed, if I am still unable to get it working in the next 2 or 3 days (assuming I do not throw it under a bus) I will be sending it back for a refund.To finish off I am yet able to access any of my NAS files on my smart phone or tablet as I have not figured out how to set up the connection, but if it is anything like the other set ups I probably wont bother.

OK, so a mirrored NAS dive has built in back-up protection. However, if you want a second level of back-up with a completely independent external drive, then you'll want to synchronise the NAS external hard drive. With the all new singing and dance Buffalo firmware you cannot do this, as the Buffalo "helps you" by creating millions of new files you don't want or need. What were Buffalo thinking of????Getting the unit to work in the first place was a challenge, after giving up trying to use and old and new disk (both compatible) I bought 2 new disk, which also didn't work - Buffalo replied but didn't know why - however a fortune power cut solved the issue!!!Looks like I'm going to have to junk my unit and buy a Synology

Easy setup - it's configured by default as RAID 1 (mirroring) which is what I wanted. I'm just going to use it as a media streamer and network drive (not configured the remote access with the app so don't know how well that works). Connected fine and can map a drive in Windows to it's Public and User folders. DLNA works fine, and while copying files from my PC's SSD, I was getting about 80MB/s write speeds while copying movies over my gigabit network which is quick enough for me, despite the 2 x 2GB coming from 5700rpm Toshiba drives which I originally thought would be slow. (Remember to set the config option to allow the disk drives to go to sleep if like me you're not using the device 24x7).As others have said, the management web pages for the device take a little getting used to, so maybe a star off for that but all in all, so far it's a great little device.

Whilst very happy with the performance of this NAS I was disappointed on the loss of mailed activity reports that I relied on with my Buffalo LS421 and earlier NAS drives. I routinely check the overnight backup and status reports in my mail inbox but the absence of these means a diversion of thought train to go searching for my confidence assurance within the administration software, and even then the system log utility doesn't work well.Another gripe is the apparent restriction on file/path length compared with my incumbent devices. transferring my data from the old "full" NAS to this new replacement has been a hassle I didn't need. Perhaps though I have inadvertently produced longer paths than where they were - further investigation required there.A further crticism is the lack of subject depth in the manual. I would have liked more guidance on "how to" rather than the simplistic overview given. Maybe I've now got to search Youtube or the forums or even product support for the answers to my queries.These were not major stumbling blocks to getting the device up and running though and on the whole I'm very pleased with my purchase.

I use this to backup my PC - nothing else. It was already setup as a mirrored pair of disks and that's the way I wanted it, so the usable capacity is only 1TB but you get the redundancy. Setting it up in any other configuration (especially RAID 0) is asking for trouble.The software that you have to download from Buffalo to find the NAS on the network didn't find my NAS and I never found out the cause - it wasn't firewall related as I temporarily disabled the firewall. That alone would have scuppered many people in their efforts to set this up, as without the IP address, you can't configure the thing. However if you know how, you can inspect the DHCP table maintained by your router, and find it there. Once you have the IP address you can enter it into your browser and connect to it that way. It was pretty easy to configure a public network share although to connect to it from my PC I had to enter username and password - I wasn't expecting that for a public share.I didn't use the supplied backup software as if you read reviews it's basically garbage. Use Cobian backup instead.I can't comment on other software/services that the NAS offers as I don't use it. My use case is very simple and it's fine for that.