Buffalo Technology has had a busy month with updates to the TeraStation, LinkStation, DriveStation and MiniStation ranges.
Starting out at the beginning of the month, the new TeraStation NAS range was announced consisting of the Duo, 4 bay, 6 bay and 8 bay versions, all now powered by Intel’s Atom D510 processor. The new models also come with two USB 3.0 ports (and two USB 2.0) to connect additional storage or to act as a print server. Aimed squarely at the business market, the TeraStations have Active Directory support, RAID 0/1/5/6/10 and come in both desktop and rackmount variants. Available from April 2011.
Mid-March, Buffalo announced the LinkStation Quad Pro, a 4 TB and 8 TB NAS aimed at the home prosumer. It can stream music and film to popular consoles such as the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, and also to any DLNA or uPNP media player. A new feature is support for the Logitech Squezebox which will please music lovers. For photographers, the “DirectCopy” feature uploads pictures from digital still or video cameras direct to the LinkStation. And finally, the new Android version of Buffalo’s WebAccess i app gives access to the multimedia from anywhere in the world. (When’s the WebOS version coming?)
Last week, it was the turn of the external drives, with the MiniStations and DriveStations getting the upgrade treatment. The MiniStation gets a capacity bump to 1 TB and now comes in a glossy black finish. The DriveStation also gets the piano treatment but now comes in two variants: for the price conscious, there’s a USB 2 version in 1 TB and 2 TB capacities but for the speed freaks, a USB 3 version (1, 2 & 3 TB) will satisfy their needs. Available now from all good retailers.
A busy month for Buffalo with something for everyone – I quite fancy upgrading to the LinkStation Quad Pro.
Todd Cochrane and Tom Newman spoke to Peter Whitman Director of Operations for DataLocker, about the importance of encrypting your data, especially when traveling. Peter Whitman talked about 
Solid-State Drives (SSDs) haven’t ousted spinning hard drives from the average PC, but they have made significant inroads in the netbook market where the performance of the SSD compensates for the weaker performance of the CPU. Andy McCaskey talks to Larry O’Connor, founder and CEO of 
If you’re the kind of person who has to have the fastest processor, the quickest memory and the nippiest hard drive, then you might as well stop reading this review and simply go out and buy a Buffalo MicroStation SSD. Because it’s fast. Probably not the fastest SSD out there, but in comparison to a spinning hard disk drive, it’s like a Formula 1 car racing a family runabout – no contest.
In the box, you get the MicroStation SSD, a quick setup manual, the True Image DVD and a USB cable. In your hand though, the SSD is a pretty boring lump of plastic. An HDD is much more solid and satisfying but that’s progress for you. The model reviewed here is the SHD-NSUH256G-EU.
Once you’ve fired up the laptop, you’ll be totally amazed at how much faster it’s become. It’s like buying a new computer! In my thoroughly unscientific testing, with the HDD installed my laptop took about 50 seconds to get to the Windows 7 login screen from power on, of which about 10 seconds was the BIOS checks. On logging in, it took 20 seconds to show the desktop background and a further 40-odd seconds to show the Windows Sidebar. Basically from pressing the power button to having a working laptop takes 2 minutes.
Freecom 
