The truth about the Buffalo LinkStation

The truth about the Buffalo LinkStation

In trying to recover the data I killed when doing my brilliant work detailed in my last post, I remembered by LinkStation.

So about 1.5 – 2 years ago, I purchased a Buffalo LinkStation

Within a few months, the thing stopped working. It just wouldn’t respond when I booted it up. Lights would flash and then nothing. So I called Buffalo Tech Support and after several attempts at upgrading the firmware, eventually I got a tech that indicated that there was a hard-drive problem.

So what does that mean?

“Oh, just send us the unit and we will replace it for free.”

What about all my data?

“Well, did you back it up?”

Nope, this was going to be my backup solution once I got it all working properly.

“Well, we do strongly encourage users to keep a separate backup of their data”

This sucks… so of course, I wanted to take the time to try to get my data off before sending it to Buffalo for replacement. Fast-forward 2 years (so now the warranty [1yr] is gone) and I finally get around to cracking open the thing to try to get the HD out and see what I can do with it.

After pulling out the HD (turns out to be a Wester Digital WD1600), I plug it into my USB HD casing and….. shazam! Nothing. The thing didn’t even spin. Just sat there. It’s like there is no power getting to it. It’s just a paper weight now. I’m frustrated. Three parties are at fault:

  1. Buffalo — for including a crappy HD in their product.
  2. Western Digital — for creating such a bad HD.
  3. Me — for purchasing a bad product and then not sending it back within the warranty time-frame (at least I could have gotten it replaced for free).

So I’m stuck. I can’t do anything with it. I even tried to put in a new HD (40GB that I had lying around) and it didn’t like it. Must have something in the firmware expecting a certain drive or something.

If anybody has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Current Mood 🙁

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