I wanted to share my experience with my new LinkStation 421e (LS421DE), and
WARN potential buyers of some issues.
Although the LinkStation 400 series is basically the new improved version of LinkStation Pro series, the LS400s actually have
LESS FEATURES than the LS-Pros do (as of firmware 1.01-0.53), even though Buffalo's website leads you to believe that both series share the same "
LinkStation NAS System" with the same features.
So far I've identified 4 features missing from the LS400s which are in the LS-Pros
- Power Management / UPS Synchronization via USB - This is important if you have a long-term power outage and want your NAS to gracefully shutdown before the UPS battery runs out. Without this you risk a hard shutdown, and once the power returns your NAS will be offline for a day or more while it checks the RAID's consistency.
- Sleep Timer - If you use the LinkStation for backups, this is a nice feature to have the NAS power up before the backup starts and shutdown a few hours later. It's not a critical feature, but it helps you save power.
- & 4. HTTP Web Server w/ PHP support & MySQL Server - You can use this to host your own custom apps. This is great on the LS-Pros as I was able to decommission some old PCs by moving their apps over to the LinkStation. Since the LS400s have beefier processors, they'd be even better suited for this, but alas, the feature is missing.
The following 4 menus from the LinkStation Pro Duo (LS-WVL/E) are completely missing from the LS421de
- System\Power Management (UPS Settings & SleepTimer)
- Network\Web Server
- Network\MySQL Server
My guess is that these regressions are due to the brand-new simpler UI on the LS400s. They probably didn't get around to building the UIs for those features yet in this early v1.01 firmware (vs the LSPro's more mature v1.65), so hopefully a later firmware will restore the missing functionality. My guess is the underlying system supports these features, so my guess is they'll eventually return.
In summary, if you don't care about those 4 features, consider this unit to have 5 stars. The setup was super easy, and it's chocked full of great features for the price. It's only slightly more expensive than a 2-bay dumb external drive enclosure, but can do so much more. Buffalo's products are very reliable, my TeraStation Pro from 2007 is still going strong after running 24x7 for the last 6.5 years.
If you do care about those features, and are ok with slightly lower (but still great) performance, get the LinkStation Pro Duo instead. A bonus is that it's cheaper!
I've contacted support who was surprised to see the features were missing. They're escalating to a senior engineer and if I learn anything new i'll update this.