Why I ditched bodily storage for the comfort of a NAS

For a very long time, bodily storage was king. I loaded my first laptop 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 choice, many people nonetheless retailer paperwork on bodily storage gadgets comparable to exterior laborious drives or USB sticks. Nonetheless, there are lots of downsides to utilizing bodily storage gadgets. This is why you need to ditch yours and swap to Community-Connected Storage (NAS) as an alternative.

Synology 2-Bay DiskStation DS223j (Diskless)

The Synology DiskStation DS223j is Synology’s price range choice. It has two bays that assist 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 Connected Storage?

It is precisely what it appears like

Synology

The title itself is fairly self-explanatory. Community-attached storage is only a storage machine that is connected to a community. It signifies that computer systems on the identical community can entry the recordsdata on the NAS, with out being bodily related to it.

Whenever you use bodily storage comparable to a USB laborious drive, you’ll be able to solely entry the recordsdata when the laborious drive is related to your laptop. 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’ll be able to entry your NAS over your property Wi-Fi.

The fantastic thing about a NAS is that it does not must comprise only a single drive. You should 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 should you want them.

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A NAS is accessible to each machine

Like a tough drive that everybody can hook up with without delay

Eero

When you have your complete film assortment saved on a tough drive, you’ll be able to join it to your laptop whenever you wish to watch a film. If you wish to watch it in your TV, you’ll be able to join the laborious drive to that as an alternative. If another person desires to look at a film, they’ll plug the laborious drive into their very own machine.

With a NAS, you needn’t play go the laborious drive. Any machine in your house can entry your NAS instantly, gaining access to all of the film recordsdata. Even higher is that a number of gadgets can entry the recordsdata on the similar time, so you’ll be able to watch a film in your TV whereas another person watches a unique film on their laptop. It is like having a tough drive that may plug into each machine without delay.

One other profit is that it makes it simpler for folks to share recordsdata. For instance, your loved ones can all add pictures and movies to a shared folder with out having to go 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 notice you want a file that is not in your laptop. If that file is on a bodily laborious drive, you are out of luck. Nonetheless, if the file is in your NAS, you’ll be able to entry it remotely so long as you’ve got an web connection.

Because of this your entire recordsdata in your NAS are accessible to you wherever on the planet 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 relations around the globe so that you could all share pictures.

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, comparable to 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 needn’t hunt for that lacking laborious drive

That pile of previous laborious drives will probably be a factor of the previous

Western Digital / Pocket-lint

For those who’re something like me, you will have drawers stuffed with USB sticks, SD playing cards, and laborious drives that comprise every part out of your trip pictures to your complete music assortment. Each time you have to entry particular recordsdata, it’s important to seek out the proper storage machine and join it to your laptop to trace down the recordsdata. Quite a lot of my bodily storage gadgets are sorely missing any labels, so it will probably take lots of looking to seek out the recordsdata that I need.

With a NAS, you do not have this downside. It can save you every part in a single location and save your self hours of looking via USB sticks. You additionally not have to fret in regards to the litter of all these laborious 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 danger of shedding all of your information

You possibly can duplicate your recordsdata to maintain them secure

Framework

This is without doubt one of the greatest causes to think about ditching your bodily storage for a NAS. Until you have been extremely fortunate, in some unspecified time in the future, you’ll have skilled the horror of a tough drive dying, inflicting you to lose giant quantities of your information. It is a painful expertise you can take steps to keep away from.

Many NAS gadgets assist a knowledge storage know-how referred to as Redundant Array of Impartial Disks (RAID) that manages your recordsdata over a number of bodily disks. There are a lot of totally different choices, however one of many easiest is RAID 1. This creates two similar copies of your information on two totally different drives. If one of many laborious drives fails for any motive, the entire information remains to be accessible, safely saved on the opposite drive. You possibly can substitute the useless drive with one other with out shedding any of your information.

It isn’t a foolproof system, and with out retaining backups elsewhere, you’ll be able to nonetheless find yourself in a state of affairs the place all of your information is misplaced. It is a lot much less doubtless that this may occur utilizing a RAID setup in your NAS, however you need to nonetheless think about retaining 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 house)

One other good thing about utilizing a NAS is that it’s endlessly expandable. That 2TB laborious drive you obtain might have felt like it might 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 totally different drives once more.

With a NAS, you do not have that downside. For those who’re operating out of house, simply add some extra drives. All the pieces that is presently saved in your NAS stays accessible, however you now have more room to retailer additional recordsdata. As a substitute of getting to exchange a tough drive with an even bigger one, you’ll be able to simply preserve including extra to your NAS to satisfy your wants, so long as there may be room for the extra drives.

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You possibly can take automated backups

Again up all of your gadgets with out lifting a finger

Samsung

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

The fantastic thing about that is that you just needn’t bear in mind to attach a tough drive to your laptop earlier than you’ll be able to back it up. All of it occurs mechanically with out you needing to carry a finger, which means you are much more prone to have an up-to-date backup accessible ought to one thing go incorrect.

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