The most popular NAS devices for home office, small business, or enterprise workgroup contain two to five hard drives.
Usually, with hard disk drives, the primary function of a NAS device is to store your files. Most people opt for attaching storage to their own networks when they care about keeping costs fixed or predictable, if they want the ability to access their data and files during internet outages, or if they’re concerned about privacy and data security. Azure, Amazon Web Services, iCloud, and many others are forms of network-attached storage, but for sake of discussion, we’ll confine ourselves to a local network. Wh ile Cloud storage in the W ide A rea N etwork (WAN) could be argued as the third method to connect computers and information as highlighted below, for sake of this discussion, we’ll confine ourselves to a local network other than this brief note. NAS devices are configured for access via permissions to users on an internal network, though you can usually set up access to your NAS devices via the internet, should you choose to do so. We’re referring to your local network at your business or in your home, which might be a hard-wired ethernet network or a WiFi-enabled network.Īs mentioned above, storage devices connected to networks are called network-attached storage, or NAS, devices. You might hear this referred to as direct-attached storage (DAS). Mac users might use Thunderbolt cables and ports. There are ways to share access to that hard drive with others, but usually, the hard drive is used exclusively by the computer it’s attached to. Most often, you’d use a USB cable to connect a hard drive or SSD to your computer’s USB port. This is what most of us do at home when we need more storage than our computer or laptop holds.