
The Ideal SolutionĪ NAS is an excellent one-stop solution for any type of user. Two 10TB disks at RAID 1 only allow you to use 10TB, as the other drive is the mirror.

Depending on the RAID level, you either lose some or use all of the drive(s) capacity installed. This way, should one drive fail, you can replace it and rebuild the data from the other one.

For example, RAID 1 offers data mirroring, so any data written to one drive is mirrored by the second. Each of these levels can implement a different type of redundancy. A RAID setup simply offers different kinds of configurations or levels. Redundancy – Dual bay, or more, NAS drives offer the user a set of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) options with the installed drives. Most of the NAS drives also offer a simple management setup, allowing even non-technical users the chance to get up and running with their own cloud within a matter of minutes and often without the security hassle of opening up a hole in the router and firewall. You can utilise the huge capacities of the installed hard drives, up to 10TB, while offering the users an easy to connect and use cloud solution. You can even store multiple backups across days, weeks, or months if you have enough storage available.Ĭloud Serving – Naturally, using a NAS as a cloud server is a great solution. With the right setup, all your desktop computers, regardless of whether you’re an individual or a business, can be backed up to a NAS. Some NAS drive manufacturers have implemented a virtualisation app that can be downloaded and installed to the NAS, which, when set up correctly, will serve the user base with a variety of virtual desktop images.īackups – NAS drives aren’t useful for merely sharing your media. If finding a virtual desktop hosting solution isn’t working for you, then a NAS drive may be a good alternative. Virtualisation – We’ve already looked at the benefits of virtualisation for home and business users. In general, a NAS will outperform a similar specified PC, at the same file serving duties, due to its low memory use operating system and the limited number of processes the hardware is required to run freeing up a lot of resources for its sharing duties. You can easily expect to see dual or quad-core processors, gigabytes of memory, high performance read and write speeds and gigabit Ethernet ports. Performance – A NAS drive, by this we mean the entire unit and the hard drives within, has a reasonable set of specifications. Therefore, depending on the capacity hard drive you require, and how many, you could be looking at anything from £40 up to £400.
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The only expense is the actual hard drives you buy to install within the NAS unit. Dual bay, two hard drive capable, NAS units can be around the hundred-pound mark.

A single bay, which means a NAS unit with space for a single hard drive, can be picked up for well under a hundred pounds. There’s also a range of installable apps that can further improve the scalability and use of a NAS, such as cloud server software, for example.Ĭost – A NAS drive is a reasonably inexpensive investment for both home and business users. In terms of service and software, many modern NAS units run a customised version of Linux, which serves as the backbone to their file and media sharing capabilities. This improved processing power allows more services to be run simultaneously, and with support for more users.
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With specifications that surpass those of a top of the range PC from not so long ago, a modern NAS is a far more capable ‘computer’ than some of the PCs found on desks. They are remarkably powerful these days too. No longer the monolithic boxes dominating the room, in fact, they’re now quite discreet, media-type installations hidden away in the corner of a living room or office. NAS technology has come a long way in the last few years.
