Direct Attached Storage (DAS) like USB hard drives and Flash drives can't offer what NAS (network Attached storage) does. Quickly and effectively DAS is being replaced by NAS. Read on to know why.
NAS have Huge Capacities
NAS have got raid controllers that can take multiple hard drives, and logically join them together , so they look like one large hard drive to you. With NAS, you can get capacities from 4TB to several Petabytes.
Hard drives can fail. NAS offer Protection from Failure
NAS offers you hard drive failure protection with a technology called RAID. If you have a 4 bay NAS running in RAID 5 mode, you have 1 hard drive failure tolerance. Any one hard drive can fail, still leaving all your data safe and accessible. Replace the failed hard drive to get the failure tolerance back.
Access your Data Anywhere with Cloud.
Since NAS connects to your Network they can easily be connected to Cloud, in fact they come with easy to implement cloud configurations. You can access your files from anywhere in the world from your phones, laptops and tablets.
Storage for Everyone
You can have several users share the NAS easily with Quotas and personal spaces defined for each user. Rules can be set in such a way that one user can only be restricted to View and change a folder, view only another and denied access to another folder.
Managable
NAS is very much manageable. Right from User access to backup rules to offsite backup and replication there is a great flexibility in how you manage your NAS. Create Rules on how the users access data, who gets access to which data and quota allocation for example.
Pictures, Songs, Movies
You can stream your movies centrally stored on your NAS to your TV, phones and tablets. have your pictures stored on the NAS and share them with friends and family without having to email it to them. You can also use it to stream your Audio files . NAS offers you a complete AV Solution.
For the Geek in you
Your NAS can pretty much do anything that a server does. Run FTP, HTTP, SQL servers, host your website, install CMS, Virtualize your PC on the NAS........... Options are endless.
