NAS – Network attached storage

HDD – Hard disk drive

Why do I think most people needs an NAS(Network attached storage)? Most people need a storage in which other family members or co-workers can share and access to and when in an unlikely event that a hard disk fail, there is a way to retrieve the data. Why use a NAS over putting an additional over your current computer and share it? 1) It is generally more reliable over putting an additional HDD(Hard disk drive) over your current computer. Why 2) It is more energy efficient It consumes a lot less electricity than leaving your computer on Functions of a NAS Then it can be used in different ways. It can be shared with users. Like a shared folder. You can set permissions to it. Who can access, who can read who can read and write to it. You can dedicate it to become like a iscsi device which only one computer is accessing it. You can setup an ftp. You can it setup so that your cctv systems can store data on your storage systems. *Note that not all cctv systems allow additional storage systems. Or setup DLNA, make streaming over your network or over the internet to your supported devices easily. Make it work with your MAC PC or Iphone or Android or other Linux or Unix systems. You sync your data with the storage systems to create a backup. You can also backup the backup with another storage system over the network or even over the internet. Hard disk for the NAS Hard disk vendors now generally develop Hard disk drives specifically design for use with NAS systems. For WD(Western Digital), there is their WD Red NASWare series. Seagate also manufactures Hard disk for NAS. Configuration of Storage Systems You can configure your storage systems to use raid 1 if you more reliability. You can even set it up to clone over to other storage systems. You can set it up with raid 5 to provide somewhat abit of redundancy and more storage. Or maybe even raid 6 if you are abit more scared. We sell a variety of Storage that suits your needs. Economic-Range NAS These are value for money NAS. They offer most of your storage needs at a fraction of the High-End NAS will provide you. They generally have lower end CPUs then High-End NAS, they might not have dual lan for redunancy and speed boost. Rule of thumb is that they are usually slower than the Higher-End NAS. High-End NAS These are the pricier halves. They usually are faster as in you usually can get a faster transfer speed. You know. In layman terms when you transfer your videos, documents to the NAS they take lesser time to complete. Firstly we introduce the 2-bay NAS The 2-bay NAS are for the users that do not need large storage space and prefers redundancy over more storage. The NAS are configured with a raid 1, in which when data is transferred to the nas the data is stored on both hard disk 1 and hard disk 2 of the NAS. If you have a 2 2tb hdds. You will have only 2 tb disk space. Next we introduce the 4-bay NAS the 4-bay NAS are the good value model. For good space efficiency with a bit of redunancy for a single disk failure, use configurations like raid 5. For a faster configuration use raid 10. There are also NAS that are above 5 bays. The 5-bay NAS. These are almost the same as the 4-bay NAS. Some of them are also reasonably priced. 5-bay NAS are geared towards those who are using a raid 5 configuration since they are more space efficient. For raid 1s they are better off with getting even number bay NASes like the 6, 12 or 24 bays. The 6-bay, 12-bay, 24-bay NAS. These are the NASes that you use when you need storage more than 4. For 6-bay, it might still be possible to go for raid 5 configurations as 1 disk failure in 6 is still somewhat acceptable but for 12-bays and 24-bay NASes i think the recommended configuration for space efficiency should be a raid 6. Raid 6 gives u 2 disk failure redunancy instead of 1. There are rack mount NAS. These NAS are space efficient. They are generally mounted in together with the rack servers. They are also usually somewhat more priceier than the standard tower standing ones.