SmallNetBuilder

Features

Owing to its "EZ" nature, the LinkStation EZ does not have many features. When the website says "Just run the Wizard and you are ready to go. There is nothing else to configure," what they really mean is that nothing else can be configured. Many companies seem to think that simple and user-friendly mean that a product can't have any options. Most people involved in technical or user support would probably agree that the best way to keep a device working is to ensure users can't change any settings. Buffalo has taken the first approach.

However, it would have been nice to see a little bit more flexibility with the EZ. The only settings you can change are the IP address (and DHCP configuration), the administrator password, the time, and whether or not to password protect the share; all of this is accomplished through the NAS Navigator (Figure 3). You can also run a disk check, and format the disk.

You can't set the Workgroup (it's stuck at WORKGROUP), manage users or groups, change the default share name (share) or workstation name (LS-LGL plus the last three characters of its MAC address). Also, the EZ does not support email alerts, logging, telnet, SSH, FTP, or web access or administration. It also goes without saying that there are no media servers, etc. Servers require configuration, which is a design no-no for the EZ.

Figure 3: Functions and settings available through the Buffalo NAS Navigator

A nice thing about the EZ is that it comes with Memeo AutoBackup (for the PC), shown in Figure 4, and Memeo LifeAgent (for the Mac). Although Memeo touts the software as being easy to use, it seemed to be harder than necessary to operate.

Memeo states that if you use the SmartPicks feature (which they recommend), "The initial backup process can take a considerable amount of time." That could explain some of the results discussed later. After the initial backup, AutoBackup only performs Incremental backups and does not need to index your files further, which means other backups will not take nearly as long.

Figure 4: Memeo AutoBackup Configuration Wizard

Memeo also allows you to select how many versions of each file you want to archive. If you choose to allow Memeo to load on startup, this means your files get backed up as soon as they change. This is nicer than the Shadow Copy feature in Windows 2003 and Vista, because it is per-file and not per-volume.

Another good feature of AutoBackup is that you can choose to include the Memeo OneClick Restore program along with your backup, so that you can restore your archives on another computer (or the same computer, in the case of hard drive failure) without having to install the Memeo software. Finally, AutoBackup allows you to password-protect your backups using 128-bit encryption.