Editor's Choice 2008: Digital Storage Buffalo Technology LinkStation Mini 1TB

The LinkStation Mini was selected as a 2008 Digital Storage Editors' Choice recipient for Popular Photography!

Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices with multiple disk drives are often bulky, heavy, and noisy. So Buffalo Technology's LinkStation Mini is a big surprise -- the smallest and lightest terabyte-capacity NAS you can buy. This palm-sized wonder measures only 5.3x3.2x1.6 inches and is just over a pound, a size and weight achieved by its stacking of two 2.5-inch, 5400rpm notebook hard drives within the same enclosure. And there's no fan, so it's nearly silent.

As a Redundant Array of Independent Disks, the LinkStation Mini can be configured either as a single 1TB RAID volume (faster) or as two 500GB volumes with mirrored data (safer). Either way it's accessible from any computer on your network via Gigabit Ethernet, and its USB 2.0 port allows you to network another hard drive with it, or share a printer using its integral print server. You also get multimedia streaming to DNLA players and computers; driver-free setup; browser-based easy configuration with permissions for multiple users and groups; scheduled backups with Memeo software; and safe power-down with Uninterruptible Power Supplies. Coolest of all is the ability to access the LinkStation Mini over the Web from any location. About $700.