Whether it is personal or business data, it adds up.
Storing, accessing, and protecting that data is important – some things to think about:
External hard drives (DAS -Direct Attached Storage) are essentially dumb devices – they neither know nor care about the machine they are attached to and setup is simple (plug your drive in, wait for the driver to install, and there you are – lots more room for data). This is great if all you need is more storage space for files and local backups. They are very affordable and usually large capacity. The downside is that there is no redundancy if the hard drive fails unless you are subscribed to an online backup service running on an attached system.
NAS drives (Network Attached Storage) aren’t attached directly to any one computer. Instead, they connect to a router via Ethernet or Wi-Fi and are visible to any computer connected to that network. Because they are tied to the network, rather than to any one computer, NAS drives continue to be available even when your computers are turned off. Little computers in their own right, they deliver most of the functionality of a business style server – redundancy (scalable to use more than one hard drive) being key. They generally come with a fair amount of mostly user friendly apps (for online backup, remote access, user accounts with permissions, etc).
NAS drives can be a little difficult to setup initially and it may be confusing knowing which RAID configuration is best for you remember– Frankenstein computer and networking techs can help!
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