New NASes

Buffalo may be down because of its wireless networking battle with CSIRO, but they're not out. The company refreshed its Linkstation networked storage line at CES, adding its first dual-drive NAS.

The LinkStation Pro Duo is a dual-drive SATA NAS with a gigabit Ethernet LAN port that supports jumbo frames and a black enclosure that looks like it was borrowed from Buffalo's existing DriveStation external attached drive line.

Like all Buffalo's NASes, the Pro Duo comes with drives, which in the case of the 1.0 TB LS-W1.0TGL/R1 model announced today, would be two 500 GB 7200 RPM SATAs.

Buffalo Linkstation Pro Duo

The Duo supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 and includes Buffalo's remote Web Access feature. Other features include Active Directory support and a Remote Power feature, which can power up the unit remotely with the included Navigator software. A USB port supports expansion drives and UPS sync. Availability is by the end of January at an estimated street price of $449.

Buffalo must believe that consumers need an easier to set up NAS, because that's what they have with the Linkstation EZ. It comes with a Windows-based installation wizard that should get anyone up and running in no time.

Buffalo Linkstation EZ

The EZ has no media servers and no USB port, but it has a jumbo-frame enabled gigabit Ethernet LAN port. The first model out is the 500 GB LS-500GL sporting a 7200 RPM SATA drive, with more capacities to be added in the coming months. It's available now at an estimated street price of $199.

By the way, both products come bundled with Memeo client backup software.