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The Buffalo Linkstation Duo is a solid all round unit that we feel is one of the better buys in its respective price bracket, it is less than half the price of the Synology DS710+ which we looked at a short while ago.
Raid 0 transfer isn't going to set the world alight, even though we enabled 9k Jumbo frames, in the real world it didn't bring any tangible benefits to the performance table. Our Gigabit network has been able to record 112 mb/s with the Synology NAS, but with the Buffalo we were lucky to record around 40 mb/s under the same conditions.
It is clear in closing that this NAS system is targeted strictly to budget minded users who don't mind sacrificing high level performance and it will make an ideal partner for file backups and for streaming HD content to various computers around a home network. We had no problems streaming 1080P MKV files for instance via our switch so we have no complaints. Demanding enthusiast users will assuredly be looking to spend more money for faster levels of gigabit performance anyway.
Acoustic performance is great, we could barely measure fan noise and the Samsung drives stayed well in control during our long term write and read tests. A great blend of acoustics and cooling has been measured by the Buffalo technicans – which is just as well as there are no fine controls over the fan speed settings (just a 2.5 inch and a 3.5 inch drive toggle option).
The strongest reason for a purchase is the extremely modest asking price – around £150 inc vat in the UK right now, which puts it firmly into the KitGuru recommended ‘bargain' zone. At this price it really is very hard to find fault.
