Buffalo LinkStation 210 NAS Personal Cloud Storage compared to wd my cloud In Depth Review
148,984
Published 2014-07-10
00:08 - Hardware overview
02:28 - Web configuration
09:06 - Mobile app
11:33 - Performance benchmark
11:45 - Final thoughts
The more I used the Buffalo NAS the more it grew on me. It is rather spartan both in its configuration and overall physical aesthetics, but it performs quite well especially as compared to the single drive WD My Cloud.
It has the same features many other NAS drives in its price range have: a DLNA server to stream video to smart TVs, support for USB external drives for backing up, etc. But its configuration will be confusing to novice users. This is one area where the WD My Cloud has the edge with its much simpler configuration process.
Most of the important settings (like usernames, file shares, etc) are piled into the 'advanced settings' when they should really be a main function off the main menu of the web based control panel. I had issues getting the cloud service to work with my Apple Airport Extreme router that lacks UPNP capabilities. I had to set up a manual IP address for the Linkstation and manually forward ports to make it work remotely. The onboard software does not walk the user through this process unfortunately.
The iOS mobile app was also a bit confusing. It uses the same icon for uploading files as it does for sending downloaded files to another application. The app overall just feels unpolished. It works but it could be better.
Despite the UI issues the performance out of the Linkstation is outstanding. My test unit has a 7200 RPM Seagate Baracuda drive on board that delivers about 42 megabytes per second in write speed and about 100 megabytes per second in read speeds on a gigabit network. This is almost double that of the My Cloud and means that it will perform better serving large sustained data streams like video to multiple users on a network.
For overall usability WD still has the edge, but for raw performance this is an impressive device that once configured will work quite well on a home or small office network. Like all NAS drives the best performance will be had over a wired (not wireless) network. This drive does not have onboard wireless but can be connected via ethernet to a wireless router.
DISCLOSURE: I received this product through the Amazon Vine program to review on Amazon's site
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All Comments (21)
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watching this in 2022. very well made video especially for one from 2014. good job.
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Congrats on getting top 100 of all Amazon product reviewer.
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8 years ago and these are still being sold lol
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awesome review Lon, in-depth in its vital points and at the same time concise 'all you need to know' information. Kudos!
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This is a really high quality, in-depth review. Thank you for the post.
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I like your reviews, very informative and you keep it interesting. Cool haircut and love the old school background with the old school looking wood book shelf :P
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This look really helpful so you don't have to drop you saved pictures to you computer. Thats super cool.
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Great in-depth review...especially the advanced menu... keep them coming
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Great vid thanks I am thinking of getting a 220 . Last one I had was a Go Flex Home that was easy and worked well until the server was closed down . Currently a Win 10 Pc is doing FTP but issues with public access being restricted ( aka it don’t connect unless you have mobile data and don’t use public wifi ) makes it miserable . From what I have seen the app will open and play pretty much any content stored on the drive .
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How do you open up its casing to replace the failed drive?
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I know this is an old video but I need some help: playing videos from within the NAS playback but no audio through iPhone speakers. However, if I connect headphones or Airplay to another speaker the audio works fine. What could be the problem?
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sorry if you answered this question. Can you use this NAS to use it as a plex server?
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Got a working 210 after having to deal with 3 RMAs with Buffalo. Once getting it and hooking it up, it didn't want to talk to my router. I had to go in and force my router to accept it and finally, I have backup for my RAID 0. Its been copying files for the better part of a couple hours now.
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Lon, will a sleep/wakeup function prolong the shelf-life of a NAS drive? If so, which NAS drive would you recommend? I am looking for a cloud hub which i can put in seagate or hitachi drives. enough of WDs, they have caused me lots of problems with data loss and disk write failures. Do advise!
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Nice review. .I'm looking for something just to back up my Google photos and iCloud photos and videos and access it from my phone's . What you recommend?
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Can i automatically back up certain iOS or Android folder(s) from any of these two? Mainly photo folders.
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Lon, you mention this is Time Machine compatible, and later in the review you mention how you have everything hardwired to the network. Did you do any testing with Time Machine wirelessly? Also, I know you mention the risk with the single drive units, and in the review you talk about the ability to make a direct copy of the drive. Is there a way to replace the hard drive in the LinkStation 210 should its hard drive fail, or a way to transfer a copy back to the LinkStation? Great review!
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Just hooked up my device. Despite the device showing a solid white light when I try to connect I get an error saying No NAS devices found. Any idea how to troubleshoot this? I can’t find anything useful on google.
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The Navigator program that came with the device will not recognize the device. Workaround is to connect via a Web Browser to the IP address. You can get the same functionality there. P.S. I deleted the program from my computer.
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hi lon, can i ask you if you recommend this product over my cloud (1bay), because i like the torrent option that my cloud doesn't have, cheers
