Customer reviews for the Buffalo Linkstation Live 500GB NAS

Absolutely fantastic. Works directly out of the box and easily connects with Vista and XP machines over wireless and wired connections. It works fantastically with PS3 as it is a DLNA certified device. Csn easily stream movies and music directly to your TV through the PS3. I have also set it up as a NAS server. (so that i can connect to it anywhere i have a broadband connection.) I am by no means an expert and this was really easy to do through the GUI interface. Does exactly what it says on box the box and so much more!

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I've seen others complaining about this, but I really can't find any problem with it.
Works out of the box no need to run any software, just plug in, let it get an IP address and start using it.
If you want to do more detailed configuration browse to its IP address and login with the easily guessable username and password (I'd suggest you change them). The UI is perfectly OK and usable for anyone with a modicum of knowledge of these things.
Works with XP, Vista, Mac OSX and Ubuntu Linux with no problems. Can't speak for any other platform, but if it works with Mac OSX and Ubuntu it should work with anything that supports Samba. I didn't try AppleTalk as there seemed no point.
As for the noise people have complained of, mine is barely audible. If you put it on a desk or other hard surface you may need to put something soft under it to stop some vibration hum, but then it does have a lump of metal spinning at 7200 RPM inside it, so it will vibrate a little, as would any other device.

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I only have praise for my Buffalo! It worked from day one and works great with: Desktop PC XP Pro Laptop No1 running Vista Laptop No2 running XP Pro All 3 devices talk & sync with Buffalo via my Net Gear wireless router DG 384

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Worked out of the box & was seen by all other PC on the router.My freecom mediaplayer 35 can also see the shares on this device. One slight problem was that when logging into the device it was all in japanese. Had to spend an hour trying to change it to English using the manual & trying to match it up with the japanese screen layout.

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Great device. Was easy to setup and install on network. Fast and with good backup software included.

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I brought this NAS drive with two aims, one as an online backup location for my working documents and as for its media server capabilities. Mine also worked out of the box, easily picking up an IP from my 3-Com router, and if you want to configure in detail the browser-based tools are fine. My network is a mixture of Vista, 2000 and XP, each machine seeing the drive OK. Can’t comment about the noise / vibration – the units in a under stairs cupboard. The backup software provided is one of those “memory” resident ones, so I will use something else as I’d rather do end of day than having a background task interfere with my other activities. As a media server it works well with the LinkTheater wireless, in regards Pictures and Music (MP3), but I’ve yet to get the Video side of things to my satisfaction

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The Buffalo Linkstation Live works fine for me with XP and Vista except that you can't back up Vista direct to itbecause the HDD file system is EXT. Perversely, you can back up Vista to an NTFS drive, copy the backup to the Buffalo and it restores perfectly! Otherwise, its a touch noisy but a piece of foam carpet underlay cured that and it doesn't spin down when not used.

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Used for about a month now and have had no problems with the reliability. Is switched off when not required but not had any problems.

The included software is a bit clunky and is not the best out there.

Not tried to do media streaming so can't comment on that function.

Buffalo have not updated the software for 8 months, so not sure if they're putting effort into this device.

Use Gigabit if you can.

Four out of five as there are as good or better out there, but is adequate as a basic home NAS.

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Very easy to use, straight out of box, up and running within 10 minutes, only reason why I dropped the overall rating to 4 is that the documents and software could do with improving. Not had any of the above issues regarding Vista, thats on a 64-bit machine and a 32-bit machine. Overall a good solid device

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First off: plugged it in, everything worked (in Vista as well as XP). The web configuration interface seems pretty slow, but fine for file access. I wanted to use this as a backup device, and the supplied Memeo software seems to work well enough. All good so far. I begun to notice the hard disk running constantly (I certainly wouldn't want one in my living room), and after 24 hours it overheated and died completely. I've managed to rescue the situation by installing one of the hacked firmwares from the net, and one based on the Pro version. The disk thrashing is down to the media server (Buffalo recommend turning it off!), and with the Pro-based firmware it now sits there quiet and not too warm and appears to be doing its job perfectly. So my experience suggests that the media sharing features of the live version turn a good product into a noisy and unreliable one.

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