Introduction

Buffalo Technology has been in the NAS (Network Attached Storage) business for many years. Over the last two years, they revamped their LinkStation product line with newly designed cases, and, more importantly, gigabit Ethernet ports. The LinkStation Pro earned high marks for good performance, while the LinkStation Live turned in slower performance, but added FTP and streaming media servers.

Noticeably missing from Buffalo’s lineup, however, was a dual drive RAID 1 model. Buffalo has plugged that hole in their product line with the new LinkStation Pro Duo.

The Pro Duo is a bit of a hybrid between the LinkStation Pro and Live. The comparison chart (Figure 1, below) from Buffalo’s website gives a good top-level comparison between the various models in the LinkStation product line, including the new LinkStation EZ.

Figure 1: Buffalo Technology chart showing a comparison of LinkStation models

Like the Pro, the Pro Duo has support for Domains and Active Directory, but it also features Web Access, a feature added via a firmware update to the LinkStation Live subsequent to our review. (More on Web Access later). Moreover, like its Pro sibling, the Duo lacks the PCast media server, the DLNA media server, and a USB print server.