I just picked up a Buffalo Systems LinkStation 160. It is a network
storage device. About the size of a Bible, it is a self-contained 160
gig hard drive (larger capacities also available) with a 100BaseT
network adapter built-in, and some convenient utilities to enable it to
function as a network file server. It offers multiple shared folders
with or without user or group access control. It also will function as
an FTP server, and USB printer server. And it allows one additional USB
2.0 hard drive to be attached in case the 160GB (or larger) capacity
starts feeling too small.
I bought it primarily to serve my home network for all those digital
pictures I've been taking. I've set up a shared folder called photos,
and created subdirectories under it to organize the digital pics. This
makes the pictures available to both my notebook and my wife's. Yes, we
could have used one of our two notebooks as a fileserver, but we began
chewing up hard drive space too quickly that way, and it was a PITA
because we had to make sure both notebooks were turned on whenever I
wanted to edit photos stored on her computer. The network fileserver is
an economical tool of convenience.
Plugged into a 100megabit router, the drive is reasonably quick.
Unfortunately our notebooks use 56kbps WiFi cards. And as those of you
who have 56Mb WiFi cards know, their actual thoroughput with WEP
enabled, with a strong signal, seems to be limited to about
12Megabits/sec. I'll probably upgrade to a faster WiFi standard soon.
Anyway, just wanted to mention that the device seems to be very
convenient, and useful to people who are starting to feel confined by
their existing storage capacity.
