Network Storage for Home and Business
Network-attached storage (NAS) sounds very big and technical--the term refers to devices that were conceived as a tool for large organizations--but this is not a geeks-only article. These hard drives with brains are now compact, inexpensive, and easy to use, and they can provide automatic backup and storage for as few as two networked computers. The products reviewed here can be installed and maintained by anyone comfortable with setting up a home or small-office network--no IT training necessary. These ten products range from networked hard drives to more richly equipped NAS units, which in turn possess fewer capabilities than full-fledged servers. Typically each contains an embedded processor, an operating system, and one or more hard drives, often with room to add still more storage capacity. The result is a dedicated storage server that lets users back up and share files.
Because they attach directly to your network via an ethernet cable rather than via your PC, networked hard drives and NAS devices sidestep the limited, relatively insecure file- and printer-sharing features built into Windows. And since NAS devices don't require a host, no PC on your network has to be on all the time or suffer the processor slowdown that file and printer sharing can cause.
Read "Net Drives" to learn more about network-attached storage.