Network Attached Storage solutions allow many computers to access an external hard drive. These drives are accessed through your home network and sort of function like a backup solution for the whole family. It allows everyone to stash their photos and files onto a same hard drive and share it with everyone.
1. Seagate GoFlex NAS
This NAS solution is aimed at first time buyers and is easy to setup. Seagate promises that you'll be able to set it up in 5 minutes. It's basically a plug and play NAS that comes in 1TB and 2TB version. The good news is that it will cost $140 and $200 respectively. [via Gizmodo]
2. Black Dwarf DIY NAS
While this might be overkill for most users, it's still nice to have this amount of space available. Will Urbina built this NAS himself and he's got 16TB of space available.
3. Tiny RAID NAS
If space is an issue, then the Thecus NAS is an interesting choice. While not as big as some of the other solutions, it's got style and is easy to use.
4. PogoPlug NAS
While Pogoplug is definitely NAS made easy, it's nice to see that they are offering a wireless adapter for an extra $29 to make your PogoPlug access your WiFi. We would have preferred seeing this capability out of the box instead of paying extra for it. PogoPlug can connect your USB hard drive to the internet, allowing you to access it from anywhere. This basically converts any USB hard drive into a NAS hard drive.
5. LaCie Network Space Max NAS
This NAS drive looks good, and has some decent options. It's one of those external hard drives that you won't want to hide away.
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Comments (4)
I'd grab a Drobo if they weren't so ridiculously overpriced. :(
Hear hear. Their managed raid is quite impressive, but not impressive enough that I'd pay more for it than the storage itself.
I asked for a Drobo Pro for a backup server at my work; a year later two drives failed at the same time and all our data was still intact! (16TB set up kept working without skipping a beat) Expensive, but if the data is worth investing, then I think I would recommend them again...
On a personal level, I would rather save for a longer period of time to get a drobo FS than to invest in a single drive nas with the single pint of failure potential...
Marco
I really liked the idea of a Drobo, but was put off by the price.
We bought an Iomega StorCenter ix-4 200d. 4tb max capacity. Small, low (35 watt) power consumption, Mac friendly. Comes setup as RAID 5, can do RAID 10 or JBOD. We kept it as RAID 5, use it for time machine on both Macs and keep our media library on it.
We did our research on www.smallnetbuilder.com and compared against others. They have some very detailed comparison charts and reviews there. Shockingly, the best price was actually in a brick-and-mortar Fry's at the time we bought in February 2010 ($699).
Nice little package that fits in less than an 8"x8"x8" cube. Our next step is setting up an automatic backup of the most critical files to an additional drive, RAID 5 will do for now.