Buffalo LinkStation NAS Enclosure

11/19 UPDATE After some trial and error and finding a tech agent who understood apple products I can now report that I am very pleased with this product. It is doing exactly what I wanted it to do and I've upped the rating to 5 stars from 3. I've been able to copy my entire itunes library to the unit. I also have both mine and my wife's macbook's backing up with Time Machine directly to the unit. The bugs I was having with the web access have also been resolved. I was able to copy all my iphoto items to the drive as well for access remotely. The only item I am having trouble with now is the remote backup from my iphone directly to the unit, but I'm confident there is a setting I'm missing that will resolve it shortly. If you are working on a Mac I highly recommend telling them when you call tech support and having them get an agent who knows Mac products to call you back when available. They were very helpful with not only understanding what I was looking at and where to go, but also in setting up an intelligent folder tree to organize the different data going on the drives. ORIGINAL REVIEW - Support is lacking...Especially for MAC's I've had this product for just over a week now. I really want to like it. Here are the problems I've encountered in the first week. First, we have Mac's at home and this product says it works with Mac's. It does, but the support people do not have Mac experience or knowledge. I've called 3 times in 10 days (once for setup and twice because the unit vanished from my home network and our time machine backups stopped) and all 3 times the people I talked to were not savvy in helping because I had a Mac. They tried, but their answer was always "95% of our users are PC's or businesses" or "let me google it to find out how it works on a Mac". I wasn't impressed or happy with those answers of course. The bigger issue is I am not a big tech person so when the system came with virtually no directions it was quite disappointing. I was expecting something of a "what would you like to do" menu or paper since it can do so many things but that wasn't available anywhere I looked. Here are the good things and things I like about the product: I was able to copy all my iTunes music onto the drives as well as my iPhone photos and videos. I was able to access the music and photos and videos from the internet site as well as the iPhone app. I was able to complete the first backup of my Mac. The device is mostly quiet and I was able to hook it up via ethernet cable to one of the DVR boxes in my house which is hard-wired into my router. So I had choices of where to locate the unit and it doesn't have to sit right next to my router. Here are some issues I've had and things that are frustrating: The support line doesn't have a lot of Mac experienced people. The folder/user/backup/drive setup was difficult to understand if you aren't an experienced IT person in my opinion. There was no instruction I could find that told you what to do first once it was powered up. So naturally I went in the order of the online manual and then once I got to the RAID setup (Chapter 4) had to delete a lot of what had come up earlier (Users/Folders) and do it again. The webaccess via iPhone is spotty at best. The app crashed routinely when I was first accessing it and trying to figure out how it worked. Better lately, but still way too many errors when accessing it. I'd say it works 50% of the time. I still do not know how to use the DLNA options to store movies/videos, etc. It's setup separate from iTunes, but I'm not sure how to get movies onto the drive other than through iTunes. There is an option in backup settings to assign a folder for Time Machine, but only 1 folder. The support people told me I should have a different folder for each computer I was backing up. So how does that work, no one was able to explain. I still don't know how to backup our mobile devices which the descriptions on the box say you can do. I've looked at Buffalo's videos on YouTube and their message boards. Some are helpful and some are not. For me, they just aren't getting across the right information. It seems that is not unique to this product though as most of the newer tech items I purchase come with limited or no directions. I feel as though these companies just want you to look around online to figure things out. I would have found it helpful if there was some type of literature or flowchart that indicated what the unit was capable of doing (backups/network drive/photo storage/etc) and then told you which to setup first, how the folder tree should look, or something like that. If you want people to be happy with the product, at least tell them how to get the most out of it. So I give the product 3 stars right now because I believe these issues can all be worked out with patience and finding the one or two people on the support line that may own Mac's. Assuming I can get that accomplished I would be satisfied with the product.