5 years is a long time in the digital world. 5 years in the storage world is a lifetime. Think back 5 years and you probably had around 100GB tops of storage at home. In fact one of first storage systems in our office had around 500GB of storage, and this was supporting 120 people. Fast forward 5 years and the combination of the widespread adoption of personal media players, along with the ever decreasing price point of disk technology, has meant now more than ever it is the time to invest in some serious storage solutions for home.

One of the easiest ways to increase your storage capacities at home is to install a larger drive in your PC, or attach an external USB solution. Although there is nothing, in principle , wrong with this method you are limiting yourself to the full potential of shared storage at home. To overcome this limitation you should consider a networked storage device, especially if you would like to share your files among more than one computer, or media player.

The Buffalo Link Station Live (500GB model) is a beast of a solution in more than just its name. For starters you get 500GB of storage which, lets face it, should be more than enough for even the most media hungry among us. And of course with that amount of data you want fast access, and the integrated Gigabit Ethernet port takes care of that. I know for some power users 500GB may not be enough and again the Live Station has you covered with 2 usb ports which provide the ability to upgrade. I think this is one of the most important features of this device, as usb drives will continue to expand in size while dropping in price, meaning this network device should, in theory, have an unlimited life-span.

Integration is also high on the list for this device with support, out of the box, for file sharing over FTP, SMB and DLNA. The latter stands for Digital Living Network Alliance and provides a common platform for sharing files across devices bearing the DLNA certified sticker. Some of the other top manufacturers involved in the DLNA include Microsoft, Intel, Sony and of course Buffalo. Support for streaming content to your Playstation 3 or XBox 360 is also supported.

Overall the Buffalo provides an extremely feature rich network storage device and one which I would highly recommend you consider if storage is on your shopping list this Christmas.

Posted on November 26th, 2007 by nigel