On its personal, the time period “network-attached storage” sounds relatively boring. You may simply think about a useful-but-dull beige field that’s meant to reside its days out in a company community’s server room.
But that isn’t the case! In reality, NAS drives are surprisingly thrilling and brimming with prospects. They’re the farthest factor from a boring company storage system, and in case you don’t have a NAS drive of your personal but, you’re significantly lacking out.
What is a NAS drive?
Think of a transportable laborious drive. Normally, you plug it into a pc to entry the contents of the drive, and you may solely entry the contents from that laptop whereas it’s plugged in.
But what in case you may join that arduous drive to your own home community? And what if that drive’s contents had been accessible by all the opposite gadgets linked on the identical community? That’s mainly what a NAS drive is in a nutshell, therefore the identify “network-attached storage.” A NAS drive is sort of a file server for no matter community it’s presently on.
You may additionally hear them known as NAS gadgets or NAS packing containers, that are primarily the identical besides they’ll home a number of drives without delay, providing extra cupboard space however serving the identical objective. But for this text, I’ll simply consult with them as NAS drives.
Here’s why it’s best to take into account including a NAS drive to your own home community and what you might use it for.
Run apps and companies 24/7
A NAS drive isn’t only for storage. Modern NAS gadgets are mainly streamlined dwelling servers, they usually allow you to set up companies and apps. For instance, you might run a BitTorrent consumer like Transmission or qBitTorrent in your NAS for torrenting, or a house media server app like Plex or Jellyfin. It will stay working 24/7 and also you received’t have to depart your power-hungry PC on on a regular basis.
There’s a lot extra you are able to do right here than you may need even imagined. A Synology NAS even contains Docker support, so you may set up a complete world of self-hosted purposes.
Home media server to your TV
Media servers are probably the most compelling service you may run on a house server, and because it seems, many NAS gadgets allow you to run software program like Plex or Jellyfin, successfully turning your NAS drive right into a media server.
When configured this manner, your NAS drive can deal with the transcoding of media recordsdata on the fly right into a format that’s appropriate along with your TV. In different phrases, you may stream media recordsdata instantly out of your NAS in your TV prefer it was your personal private Netflix. (A phrase of warning, although, that older NAS drives or ones with slower {hardware} might wrestle to transcode high-resolution media recordsdata—like 4K movies—on the correct speeds. If that is your use case, remember to get stable {hardware}.)
Ben Patterson / Foundry
Modern sensible TVs and streaming packing containers typically have Plex shoppers you may set up. With these, you may place all of your films, TV exhibits, music, and even images in your NAS, then connect with it along with your TV and stream. There’s no want to attach a USB drive to your TV and cart recordsdata backwards and forwards when you may entry them over the house community.
You may also arrange distant entry to entry the NAS from exterior your community! You can remotely stream out of your music library, and even grant buddies entry to your NAS to allow them to stream it, too. This is among the finest causes to make use of a NAS!
Network backups for all of your gadgets
We all know we needs to be backing up information frequently. But native backups might be inconvenient. You must plug an exterior drive into every of your PCs and carry out the backups, or depend on an internet backup service.
A NAS drive makes the entire course of approach simpler, supplying you with a central location to which all of your PCs can again up their information. Since all of it occurs over the community, you don’t must plug something anyplace, and gadgets can mechanically again as much as the NAS on a schedule. Unlike with cloud backups, you’re backing as much as your personal {hardware}—and backing up and restoring recordsdata is quicker as a result of it’s over your native community.
You should need to again as much as the cloud, although. It’s good to have a number of backups, each onsite (i.e., in your NAS) and offsite (i.e., someplace bodily exterior your own home or workplace).
Easy file sharing between gadgets
While a NAS can do much more than simply storage, network-attached file storage can be precisely what it says on the tin. You get a pool of storage you may entry over the community from any system. It’s nice for file sharing and accessing the identical recordsdata throughout a number of PCs.
It’s additionally an effective way so as to add extra storage to all of your gadgets. Rather than putting in extra big hard drives in your numerous PCs or lugging around portable SSDs, you are able to do all of it with a NAS that has ample storage. Every system on the community can use the NAS like an exterior drive.
And in case you use your NAS as a dumping grounds for recordsdata, it’s tremendous straightforward to switch recordsdata between, say, your PC and your MacBook. Use the NAS as a intermediary makes file transfers handy.
Remote file entry with out the cloud
Modern PCs, gadgets, and apps need to retailer your recordsdata on the cloud, and that’s why in case you’re utilizing Windows, you’ll discover that OneDrive wants to slurp up everything in your Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos folders and retailer all of it on-line.
That might be handy… however you could choose to handle your personal recordsdata. In reality, you could need to retain native management of your recordsdata whereas making them remotely accessible when you’re away from dwelling, whether or not in your telephone, a pill, or a laptop computer. A NAS can do that because of distant entry capabilities. If you set it up proper, you may browse and entry your recordsdata even once you’re away from your own home community.
Just remember to allow distant entry with correct safety in thoughts. It’s not a good suggestion to reveal your NAS on to the web. A characteristic like Synology QuickConnect permits you to entry your NAS over the online with out really forwarding ports and making it susceptible to hackers.
Storage to your safety digicam footage
Speaking of skipping the cloud, a NAS drive can be an important storage possibility for dwelling safety cameras. Normally, you both preserve all of your safety footage on a microSD card and manually pull movies off once you want them, otherwise you pay for a premium subscription offered by your safety digicam model that auto-uploads footage to their cloud.
Rather than going for a cloud-connected safety digicam system that prices you subscription charges, you may arrange an area storage-focused setup that information to a NAS. For instance, check out the Synology Surveillance Station software for Synology NAS gadgets.
Get began along with your first NAS drive
There’s a lot you are able to do with a NAS drive. You may use it as a networked photograph library that permits you to remotely share images with buddies or household. You may use it as a VPN endpoint so you may remotely entry your own home community whereas away from dwelling. Think of a NAS drive as a multipurpose dwelling server—not simply storage connected to your community—and the probabilities will open up.
If you need to get began pronto however don’t know what to get, there’s nothing mistaken with shopping for a pre-built NAS field. I’d suggest the tried-and-true Synology DiskStation DS224+. It has two hot-swappable bays and helps each 3.5-inch SATA HDDs and a couple of.5-inch SATA SSDs, nevertheless it’s diskless so that you’ll have to provide your personal drive. To take full benefit of Synology’s options, you’ll want Synology-branded drives—just like the 4TB Synology HAT3300 Plus Series.
Other choices embody the 2-bay Ugreen NASync DXP2800 and the 4-bay TerraMaster F4-212, each diskless as effectively. Whatever you find yourself getting, you’ll love the additional comfort and performance you get from having network-attached storage. It’s a game-changer!