646 views 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...The Pitch: The safety of RAID, the size and noise advantage of 2.5-inch notebook drives, and low-power credentials aimed at anybody who has wept over their electricity bill this winter: Buffalo has rammed the palm-sized LinkStation Mini with up to 1TB of storage and functionality you’d usually expect from a business NAS. Fanless and DLNA certified, the Mini is just as happy in your lounge as it is your office.
Pros: Anybody soured to backup by the thought of hulking servers might just lose their heart to the Mini: occupying about the same amount of space as some full-sized single-drive storage, it comes with all the software you need to make sure those painstakingly-tagged holiday photos don’t disappear with the next trojan attack. Speed junkies can flip over to RAID 0 for serving up high-def video, and there’s the option to add more capacity via the USB 2.0 port.
Cons: Notebook drives are small, but they lack speed over their 3.5-inch counterparts; they’re also, gigabyte for gigabyte, more expensive. That elfin enclosure and ear-friendly running volume will hit you in access times as well as your wallet.
Recommendation: Grown up office types will want to look elsewhere, but home users wanting straightforward backup, media serving, and web access should find plenty to please in the Buffalo LinkStation Mini — if they can summon up the $499.99 sticker price. Still, it deserves to go forward.
