SmallNetBuilder

Construction Details

The Pro is much easier to get apart than the original LinkStation - a few screws and some careful jiggling to unlatch the internal plastic case snaps was all it took. Figure 1 shows all the innards and Figure 2 the board. The 250 GB Western Digital WD2500JS-00NCB1 Caviar SE drive (8MB cache, 7200 RPM, 300 MB/s SATA) is mounted to a metal panel that normally bolts over the motherboard, but has enough slack so that it can be easily swung aside as shown in the photo.

Figure 1: LinkStation Pro inside view (click image to enlarge)

Figure 2 shows a close-up of the Pro's board, which is based around a Marvell "Orion" 88F5182 Media Vault Processor, with the single gigabit Ethernet port provided by a Marvell 88E1111. 128 MB of RAM comes from two Elpida EDE5116AF DDR2 SDRAM chips and 256 kB of Flash from a chip on the circuit side of the board.

Figure 2: LinkStation Pro board (click image to enlarge)

Buffalo told me that the Pro runs on MontaVista Linux, the same as the earlier LinkStations. The Pro's download page didn't have the link to Buffalo's GPL download page when I checked it, but they assured me that it would be added soon. In the meantime, use this link.

Note that even though the Pro is easy to open, swapping your own drive in will take a bit of doing. Like Buffalo's other diskful products, the Pro won't automatically initialize a blank drive. Due to UL regulations regarding the power supply, Buffalo can't even officially condone opening the case. But if you download the firmware update utility and as long as the drive inside the Pro has no partitions, the utility will partition the drive with the SWAP, OS, and Data partitions and you should be on your way. Of course, doing this will void your warranty.