The Buffalo LinkStation Pro is a home network storage device that is more like a corporate file server than an external USB drive. This NAS unit comes with its own processor, Gigabit Ethernet networking and SATA drives. So in fact this little unit is a stand alone file server.

Speed issues with other models seems to have been alleviated with the usage of a Gigabit network connection and of course the inclusion of faster hard drives. Buffalo claims that the speed of this unit rivals a local USB drive. In practice this performance claim didn’t quite pan out but it is still by far the fastest unit like this that we have seen.

The unit comes in several different capacities; 250, 300, 400, 500 and 750 GB units are all available. The 250 GB unit is available at around $200. The 750 GB unit is available at around $650.

If you are looking for home network based storage then this is definitely the model to get. That brings up the question: why do you need this? The answer is that if you have many home computers and want to back up each one then this is a perfect solution. Also if you want to share files, like movies or mp3’s among several computers then a NAS solution would work fairly well.

Manufacturer’s site