Why I ditched bodily storage for the comfort of a ...

For a very long time, bodily storage was king. I loaded my first pc video games from cassette tapes, and utilizing my first 5.25-inch floppy disk felt like magic. 3.5-inch disks dominated for some time earlier than USB flash drives and external hard drives took over.

Whereas cloud storage is now an possibility, many people nonetheless retailer paperwork on bodily storage units reminiscent of exterior exhausting drives or USB sticks. Nevertheless, there are a number of downsides to utilizing bodily storage units. Here is why you must ditch yours and swap to Community-Hooked up Storage (NAS) as a substitute.

Synology 2-Bay DiskStation DS223j (Diskless)

The Synology DiskStation DS223j is Synology’s finances possibility. It has two bays that help 3.5-inch SATA HDDs or 2.5-inch SATA SSDs with an adapter. It comes with Synology DiskStation Supervisor on board.

What’s Community Hooked up Storage?

It is precisely what it appears like

Synology

The identify itself is fairly self-explanatory. Community-attached storage is only a storage system that is hooked up to a community. It signifies that computer systems on the identical community can entry the recordsdata on the NAS, with out being bodily linked to it.

Once you use bodily storage reminiscent of a USB exhausting drive, you possibly can solely entry the recordsdata when the exhausting drive is linked to your pc. With a NAS, you do not want a bodily connection in any respect; all of the recordsdata are accessible over the community. In your house, for instance, you possibly can entry your NAS over your house Wi-Fi.

The great thing about a NAS is that it does not should comprise only a single drive. You need to use a number of drives in a NAS to extend the storage capability and add redundancy, including additional drives to your NAS at a later date in case you want them.

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A NAS is accessible to each system

Like a tough drive that everybody can connect with directly

Eero

You probably have your total film assortment saved on a tough drive, you possibly can join it to your pc whenever you need to watch a film. If you wish to watch it in your TV, you possibly can join the exhausting drive to that as a substitute. If another person desires to look at a film, they’ll plug the exhausting drive into their very own system.

With a NAS, you need not play cross the exhausting drive. Any system in your house can entry your NAS straight, gaining access to all of the film recordsdata. Even higher is that a number of units can entry the recordsdata on the similar time, so you possibly can watch a film in your TV whereas another person watches a unique film on their pc. It is like having a tough drive that may plug into each system directly.

One other profit is that it makes it simpler for folks to share recordsdata. For instance, your loved ones can all add images and movies to a shared folder with out having to cross round a tough drive or add recordsdata into the cloud.

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You possibly can entry your recordsdata remotely

You may by no means depart your recordsdata behind once more

You are catching up on a bit of labor at a espresso store whenever you understand you want a file that is not in your pc. If that file is on a bodily exhausting drive, you are out of luck. Nevertheless, if the file is in your NAS, you possibly can entry it remotely so long as you might have an web connection.

Because of this your whole recordsdata in your NAS are accessible to you anyplace on the earth at any time. It is like your individual cloud storage with out having to pay for a cloud storage subscription. Your shared family photos folder will also be shared with different members of the family all over the world so that you could all share images.

In fact, that does not imply that anybody can entry your NAS. There are methods to make sure that your connection to your NAS is safe, reminiscent of using a VPN tunnel or utilizing safe relay companies supplied by your NAS producer. That method, you do not have to fret about different folks snooping round in your recordsdata.

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You need not hunt for that lacking exhausting drive

That pile of outdated exhausting drives will likely be a factor of the previous

Western Digital / Pocket-lint

Should you’re something like me, you may have drawers stuffed with USB sticks, SD playing cards, and exhausting drives that comprise every little thing out of your trip images to your total music assortment. Every time that you must entry particular recordsdata, you need to seek out the right storage system and join it to your pc to trace down the recordsdata. A number of my bodily storage units are sorely missing any labels, so it will probably take a number of searching to seek out the recordsdata that I need.

With a NAS, you do not have this drawback. It can save you every little thing in a single location and save your self hours of searching via USB sticks. You additionally now not have to fret in regards to the litter of all these exhausting drives or the truth that your thumb drive has a USB-A connector, however your laptop computer only has USB-C ports.

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There’s much less threat of shedding all of your knowledge

You possibly can duplicate your recordsdata to maintain them protected

Framework

This is among the largest causes to think about ditching your bodily storage for a NAS. Except you’ve got been extremely fortunate, in some unspecified time in the future, you should have skilled the horror of a tough drive dying, inflicting you to lose giant quantities of your knowledge. It is a painful expertise you could take steps to keep away from.

Many NAS units help a knowledge storage expertise known as Redundant Array of Impartial Disks (RAID) that manages your recordsdata over a number of bodily disks. There are lots of completely different choices, however one of many easiest is RAID 1. This creates two similar copies of your knowledge on two completely different drives. If one of many exhausting drives fails for any motive, the entire knowledge remains to be accessible, safely saved on the opposite drive. You possibly can change the useless drive with one other with out shedding any of your knowledge.

It is not a foolproof system, and with out maintaining backups elsewhere, you possibly can nonetheless find yourself in a scenario the place all of your knowledge is misplaced. It is a lot much less seemingly that it will occur utilizing a RAID setup in your NAS, however you must nonetheless contemplate maintaining offsite or cloud backups, too.

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You possibly can at all times add extra storage

Add additional drives to your NAS (so long as there’s area)

One other advantage of utilizing a NAS is that it’s endlessly expandable. That 2TB exhausting drive you obtain could have felt like it will be greater than sufficient whenever you purchased it, however now it is full, and you are going to have to start out switching forwards and backwards between completely different drives once more.

With a NAS, you do not have that drawback. Should you’re working out of area, simply add some extra drives. All the pieces that is at the moment saved in your NAS stays accessible, however you now have more room to retailer additional recordsdata. As an alternative of getting to switch a tough drive with an even bigger one, you possibly can simply hold including extra to your NAS to satisfy your wants, so long as there’s room for the extra drives.

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You possibly can take automated backups

Again up all of your units with out lifting a finger

Samsung

Your NAS does not simply defend the info saved on its drives. You need to use one to guard the info in your tech units, too. Many NAS units include software program that may mechanically take backups from units in your community, reminiscent of your Home windows or macOS computer systems and even your cellular units. You possibly can schedule these backups to cut back the chance of shedding vital info if one thing goes mistaken together with your system.

The great thing about that is that you just need not bear in mind to attach a tough drive to your pc earlier than you possibly can back it up. All of it occurs mechanically with out you needing to carry a finger, which means you are much more more likely to have an up-to-date backup accessible ought to one thing go mistaken.

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