LinkStation 720

I have several Buffalo NAS drives and haven’t had issues with any of them. Setup is easy and management software is intuitive. I bought this one as used and the password and done files were left on it, but factory reset was easy and I set it up quickly.

(2 X 2Tb) If I had depended on the reviews, I probably would not have bought this. A friend had one and recommended it. I am using it for backup on my home network, which consists of PCs and Chromebooks.Some people gripe about the speed, which really doesn't matter to me because it backs up at night while I am sleeping.Having very little experience with networking, it took me a couple hours of fiddling with it (and my PCs) to get everything set up the way I wanted. This included setting up Paragon Backup software (free version). Just to experiment, I did set up a share folder with some videos and they play well over the network. The documentation is not very good, but you can find a YouTube video if you need help. It has only been installed for a few days, but so far I am very pleased.

I gave this a chance because the price was so much better than the Synology NAS since disks were included. I have been trying to get network-attached storage set up so that I can have a location for my Time Machine backups.What I do like about it:- Disks are included which theoretically make things easier (and cheaper)- It has two drive bays and RAID 1 is automatically enabled, which is probably what most people want.- It also has some utilities for working with RAID including RAID scanning.- It has clear instructions for how to turn it on/off without damaging the disks.- The box itself is stylish and not overly largeSetup was a bit worse. The Quick Start guide is sort of like an IKEA instruction booklet - not the greatest but you can figure out what they want you to do. However the user interface was otherwise a little confusing, for example they have two separate iPhone apps in addition to the laptop app, the download page is a bit clunky, there aren't any downloads for recent Mac versions (you have to go with a several-year-old Mac version), etc. On the whole the software was not confidence-inspiring.But whatever, that didn't bother me too much - I just wanted to get Time Machine setup. As long as that works, I don't care about the rest. So I followed the instructions and it seemed like it was working. But then it just cut out and stopped. This happened several times. From Googling I got the idea to ping the NAS to see if it was connected, and sure enough, the problem seems to be that the NAS and the laptop can only connect intermittently.From the record of my pings, I can see that they are connected 5-10% of the time, and disconnected the rest. That's not a great ratio. The NAS is connected to my WiFi router by Ethernet. My laptop, WiFi router, and NAS are all in the same room. I purchased my WiFi router 2-3 years ago. During the time when my laptop cannot connect to the NAS, I can still browse web pages. That's particularly confusing because it means that there's no problem with my laptop's connection to the WiFi router, and the router and NAS are connected by Ethernet. I'm not sure what I'm missing.Unfortunately this seems to be a common problem with NAS routers, and I don't really know the solution. My old Apollo had a similar problem I think. However, I think that Buffalo should provide troubleshooting instructions for attempting to address these problems. If they can't fix this problem, I think they should just stop selling their product.

Considering the reviews, most NAS drives for home usage are slow and not very reliable. I went between an WD MyCloud and the Buffalo. The latter is now deployed in my home, but only for a day. It's connected to a satellite of the Netgear Orbi 750 (5400 Mbps Wifi 6) and base speed should be sufficient.Anyway, setup comes first and the drive basically connects to an ethernet port somewhere in your network. Although the Buffalo LinkStation 710 sports a 2.5 Gbps ethernet port, the mentioned satellite is limited to a 1 Gbps port. However, that's unlikely to be a problem.Setup has a printed quick start guide, and most of the time it's fairly clear what to do next. The software link references a Japanese server (in English). This is where to download the two relevant apps (NAS Navigator for setup and firmware updater). The firmware updater is over the network and, for some inexplicable reason, took 30 minutes for the update that ended up failing. A second attempt finished successfully in about a minute.The NAS Navigator software is used to set up a new drive (i.e., to find it), and after that is reduced to mainly being a hyperlink to the web interface of the drive itself. Most information relies on this rather than the software installed on the desktop. Once installed, some options are cryptic at first and user guidance is minimal. You can get it done, however, with a little "guessing".You can create protected folders that only selected users can access. First i was curious how fast the drive would perform as that's both a network issue and the included server/drive. The S.M.A.R.T. info for the drive reveals that it's a Seagate ST4000VX005, which is a 7200 rpm SATA drive. Seagate rates the maximum transfer speed at 180 MB/s. That's not SSD territory, but pretty good for an HDD.Now, there are multiple factors influencing the effective speed and my tests were neither comprehensive nor may they be representative. That said, from my Windows 11 desktop I could achieve a decent 80 MB/s maximum with a fairly consistent data rate. I used a 1 GB file, and that's more efficient than small files. Not directly comparable are my Mac Mini M1 results where I used BlackMagic's SpeedDisk benchmark. As it employs multiple file sizes, it's more realistic, but that's likely not the only excuse for the rather disappointing 30 MB/s maximum for read and write.Overall, the performance is in line with other reports and time has been too short to judge reliability. Once set up, it's easy to use. The supplied software tools, however, are rather minimalistic. The web interface from the drive directly, however, is good.Last, but. It least, the fan is fairly noticeable. In a quiet room, it can be easily heard from more than 2 m.