Buffalo Forums

   

I am sourcing a NAS for a friend who is planning a around the world sailing trip.  The LinkStation Mini seems idead (size, power consumption, reputation).  But I have a couple of questions:

 

- In the spirit of having both suspenders and a belt (and a spare set of suspenders and a spare belt), we would need to have a spare hard drive in case one of the hard drives on the LinkStation Mini fail.  What are the specs?

 

- What is the process to replace a hard drive (take the unit apart, take the bad drive off, put a new one, power on and wait for the RAID to rebuild itself?)

 

- We might need more than 500BG of storage (assuming a LInkStation Mini 1TB in Raid 1 configuration).  We would use a pair but upgrading the drives inside the LinkStation Mini to 2x 1TB could do the trick to.  Is this possible?

 

Thanks.

"I am sourcing a NAS for a friend who is planning a around the world sailing trip.  The LinkStation Mini seems idead (size, power consumption, reputation).  But I have a couple of questions"

 

It may be, but be aware that this unit wasn't meant for frequent transportation.  It doen't have the proper shock absorbing potential that you need.  Just be careful with it on the trip thats for sure.

 

"In the spirit of having both suspenders and a belt (and a spare set of suspenders and a spare belt), we would need to have a spare hard drive in case one of the hard drives on the LinkStation Mini fail.  What are the specs"

 

Technically the unit was not meant to be disassembled nor was the HDD meant to be replaced.  The process (although it voids your warranty) is probably documented quite well somewhere else online.  Once you got the drive back in you would just need to restructure the array through the web interface.

 

"We might need more than 500BG of storage (assuming a LInkStation Mini 1TB in Raid 1 configuration).  We would use a pair but upgrading the drives inside the LinkStation Mini to 2x 1TB could do the trick to.  Is this possible?"

 

It may work (we have only tested up to 2 500GB here), but once again this would require disassembling the LS, which voids the warranty.

 

As for the specs of the drives themselves it depends.  With different units and different capacities you have different speed drives.  I beleive the 1 TB comes with 5400 RMP but I am not sure so please don't quote me on it (as it may be different for diffferent units).

   

I do not understand why RAID 1 is a feature if replacing HDs is not possible.

What is the point?  If the array fails, R U not SOL? How can data be recovered?

Thanks - I got 1TB unit assuming protection - just realized that was a was a waste of money. No point in getting this unit if there is no way to replace dead HDD. Also from forums I realized that the chances of recovering data by taking the HDD out of the unit is also not necessary to work.

 

I am now backing up my data back to 500G ARAID unit which I was about to discard after getting Linkstation Mini. Now I need to find a real RAID NAS - suggestions are invited for any non-buffalo models comparable with Mini, but with real protection.

The definition of RAID with 2 disks says that if one of the disks goes faulty then the data is still accessible of the other disk.

The Linkstation mini fulfils this purpose, RAID says nothing about actually replacing the disk.

 

If you want that then you should of done your research into the device you were purchasing and gone for a Linkstation Duo!

Opening this unit might be a challenge, well it was for me. I've tried 2tb sata x 2. importantly, initialized the new hdds on a computer first then proceed to plug into the ls mini. actually the hdds are placed front & back with two metal pieces holding onto the hdds. Pls make sure you have downloaded the tftp application & the latest firmware for the ls mini. After booting, there will be a red led shown, proceed to press on function button at the back and run the tftp.exe program. blue led will come on then after 2-3mins, extract and run the lsupdater.exe in the firmware folder. After updating firmware, access the web settings of the ls mini and disk management to format disk 2. after that, goto raid setup to setup raid1.