Which disks should I use?Īll the NAS drives we’ve recommended below can be bought diskless. Speeds can top 100MB/sec for a single big file, but for a folder containing lots of small files, the file system overhead will mean things go a lot more slowly.
If your router only offers 100Mbits/sec Ethernet, your speeds will be severely limited: upgrading your router would be your first step to getting the best performance.Įven with a Gigabit connection, don’t expect superfast file copies all the time. Your NAS drive should be connected to a Gigabit Ethernet port on your router.
You may even be able to plug in a keyboard and mouse and run desktop apps on the NAS appliance – but don’t expect blazing performance as NAS hardware is quite lightweight by desktop PC standards. These let you use built-in apps to turn your appliance into a video player or audio jukebox. You may also see HDMI and audio sockets for connecting a monitor and speakers directly to your NAS box.
How to create a backup (and restore it) in Windows 10 If your data is currently scattered across a selection of external drives, it’s an easy way to consolidate all your files into one place. There’s also often a connector at the front for one-touch copying: simply plug in a USB hard disk and press the copy button, and the contents of the external drive will be copied onto the NAS. Most NAS appliances offer one or more USB 3 ports, meaning you can hook up an external hard disk and share files over your network. But they’re naturally noisier and more power-hungry – as well as generally quite a bit more expensive. For example, with four 1TB drives, you can store up to 3TB of data, and if any single drive should fail, you can simply drop in a replacement and carry on working.įour-bay NAS appliances also tend to have additional features, such as more ports and LCD displays. In this arrangement, a portion of each disk is reserved for parity data from the other three drives (which makes it possible to rebuild the array in the event of a failure). With four disks, you can set up a RAID5 array, which offers a better balance of capacity and data security. If you’re willing to spend a bit more, a four-bay NAS drive is more versatile. Don’t be tempted to rely solely on JBOD or RAID0 configurations, however: these offer more capacity, but lack fault tolerance – if one drive fails, all your data is lost. That way, if one drive fails, you’ll still have a copy of all your data. NAS drives all come with a different number of drive bays, with consumer models generally coming in one, two, three or four-bay variants.Ī sensible minimum is a two-bay system, using two matching hard disks in a mirrored RAID1 configuration. What type of NAS should I buy? And how many bays do I need? JBOD allows you to take drives of varying sizes and combine them into a single volume.Īll of the NAS drives on this list support JBOD and various RAID levels, from RAID 1 to RAID 10. JBOD: Just a Bunch Of Disks – no, seriously.RAID: Redundant Array of Independent Disks – a method of storing the exact same data on multiple disks – in case of hardware/software failure – that also benefits performance.Storage manufacturer Seagate describes NAS as "like having a private cloud in the office", and we think that's spot on. NAS: Network-Attached Storage – a storage device that is attached to a local network.
READ NEXT: Best cloud storage solutions How to choose the best NAS drive for you What do all the acronyms mean?īefore we begin in earnest, here's a brief index of confusing acronyms and what they mean (for the newcomers out there): We're here to steer you towards the best NAS drives on the market right now, but before we do, here's a guide to unscrambling the acronyms and choosing the best NAS appliance for you. No matter what your needs, a NAS can help. Better still, modern NAS appliances can also run all sorts of useful network applications, from media servers to databases, wikis and security camera management systems. And, if one of your hard drives fails, it’s good to know that a multi-disk RAID array is keeping your data safe. It ensures that you can access your data from wherever you happen to be, even if you’re out on the road, thanks to the easy-to-use remote-access services that come as standard. In most homes today you’ll find a plethora of desktops, laptops and mobile devices – so a central repository for your important files makes sense. But network-attached storage isn't just for big businesses. If you're a business owner, it makes perfect sense to invest in the best NAS drive you can afford.