Network-attached storage, or NAS, may be one of the best-kept secrets in personal technology.
“It is one of the fastest-growing categories of data storage, but most consumers still haven’t heard of NAS,” said Seema Lindskog, director of product marketing at Western Digital, a hard-drive manufacturer that also sells NAS products. “Most people are still using external hard drives for backup.”
For the uninitiated, NAS provides a central hard drive on which you can store, share, and back up all files from multiple computers in the household. The NAS drive connects via an Ethernet cable to a home-network router. Unlike an external hard drive, an NAS device has a processor and uses its own operating system for storage and sharing of photos, music, video and personal files
An NAS drive will cost approximately $75 to $100 more than an external hard drive with the same storage capacity.
“But the value goes up when you have multiple computers in the house — that’s where NAS drives prove their worth,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD Group, a market research firm. “It enables all PCs to access and store files on the drive without having to physically plug in a drive to each computer.”
Makers of NAS devices say home users primarily employ the drives for centralized storage and file sharing among multiple computers; data backup; and remote access to photos, video, music and other files.
Most NAS drives enable families to create a centralized, consolidated library of photos, videos and digital music that can be streamed to high-definition TVs and other networked devices in the home. To use it, you will need a digital media adapter or game consoles like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 that connect to your HD TV.
NAS drives also have software that can be set to back up every computer…