The Buffalo LinkStation 500-series offers single, dual and four
bay solutions to the home and SMB user. The LinkStation 520
is one of the company’s more popular models, and it’s easy to
see why.
This is a two drive device with supported capacity options of
2TB, 4TB, 6TB and 8TB setups. Inside there’s a Realtek
RTD1195N dual core 1GHz CPU and 256MB of DDR3 memory
that helps power the unit along nicely.Connectivity consists of a single USB 3.0 port along with one
for Gigabit Ethernet; also DC power in and a power slider
between devices as well as any custom settings you’ve added.
The device measures 87 x 126 x 205mm and weighs a
reasonably chunky 2.5Kg. The matte black plastic casing is well
constructed and capable of taking a few knocks. There are a
couple of LEDs located at the front of the NAS for power and
when a USB transfer is in operation.The front door can be removed , popping off completely as
opposed to a swing door option, revealing the two drive bay
slots fitted with a couple of hot-swap drive bays. Removal of
the drives is as simple as pulling on the handle and you can
custom fit any SATA 3Gb/s drives up to a maximum capacity of
8TB at present.
There are a number of storage options when you first setup the
LinkStation 520. The default is RAID 0, offering better
performance but with no redundancy should anything go
wrong. You also have RAID 1 that drops the capacity but adds
mirroring for data safety should one of the drives fail. Finally,
there’s a Linear option, where the total capacity of all the drives
are available but without any redundancy.Setting up was incredibly easy, through the combination of the
Buffalo NAS Navigator app and the Linux-like web portal of the
drive itself. Once you’ve added a user, set up the time zone and
so on, you afre presented with a desktop where you can gain
access to all the LinkStation’s functions and shared folders,
along with the maintenance and set up of the device.For many years, Buffalo Technology has provided the end user with some
excellent backup and storage hardware. The LinkStation range is an easy-
to-use, consumer NAS solution.
Buffalo LinkStation 520
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Advanced Cloud Uses