Buffalo Linkstation

I recently purchased a NAS solution (Network Attached Storage) from Buffalo in order to backup my mp3 collection on my iPod and the photos on my laptop hard drive and access them from any device in my flat. The actual model I went for is the HS-D300GL , mainly for its DLNA support.

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) have set out some guidelines in order to help guarantee that connectivity between devices will work out of the box, irrespective of manufacturer. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to extend to Microsoft's XBox 360, when I tried to access the data on the Linkstation from the XBox 360 dashboard the device is not visible.

Fortunately all is not lost, with the help of an excellent website Linkstationwiki.net I upgraded the firmware to a custom OpenLink version which enables a telnet connection to the Linkstation and upgraded the linux kernel with the help of this guide. The final piece of the puzzle comes courtesy of TwonkyVision, and their TwonkyMedia software which can spoof the Linkstation as a Windows Media Centre PC and make it visible to the XBox 360. TwonkyMedia is one of the few pieces of software available over the Internet that I've actually paid for so it must be pretty good, compatibility issues due to Microsoft updating the XBox 360 Dashboard are swiftly resolved and €30 seems like a bargain.

I have to say that setting up the Linkstation out of the box took about 5minutes, and upgrading the firmware was also pretty straight forward with DHCP address allocation turned on. I now have a solution where I can access any shared data from any DLNA device in my flat as well as the XBox 360.