Custom Search

Best Home Nas - This Is What You Need To Know To Avoid Home Network Storage Buyers Regret

If you are looking for the best home NAS to consolidate your data, music and media files then you want to buy the best home network storage you can for the money. A home NAS device will last a long time if you check things out and buy the most appropriate one for your needs..

With a little bit of buying guidance you can sort through the features and benefits of the hardware on the market and get what best fits how you are going to use this storage device in your home.

For many a home NAS is only bought so that individual computers can be backed up to a single central location. For that you may not be interested in NAS RAID to protect your data from a hard drive failure since it is only serving as a backup to other hard drives. Sooner or later, though, you will find yourself storing something on there that is NOT just a backup file and when you lose it you will be very unhappy.

Hard drives fail. No exceptions. Any hard drive that does not fail on you is a hard drive you did not own long enough. Hard drives are like light bulbs, they can last a week or a decade. Most, though, fail somewhere in between.

A lot of people find out what all they can do with the best home NAS devices available and then decide they want those features too.

If you are like most people and are using your new home network storage device to consolidate all of your music, movie and data files from all of your computers you might find it very convenient that some NAS devices have the ability to automatically backup to an online backup service for a small yearly fee.

Let's face it, most backups just do not happen unless they are setup to work automatically.

One benefit that I make high use of is that you can download movies, which are usually pretty large, straight to your home NAS that is connected to the home network and then stream that movie to your PlayStation, XBox or even right to your TV to watch.

Many cheap NAS devices available do not have the ability for media streaming and other cool multimedia functions like the best home NAS devices offer.

Something else for you to consider is how many hard drives you want the home network storage device to be able to hold. Most will hold at least two and offer to "mirror" those in a RAID1 array.

Higher end models will hold either four or six hard drives in hot swap drive bays and give you the option of starting out with only a couple of hard drives and then expanding later on. Here again you want to make sure that the NAS device you buy is able to expand the storage area without having to backup your data, reconfigure the unit with the new or larger drives and then restore your data back onto it.

By: Ed Lawrence

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Take the hard work out of finding the best home NAS by letting home network storage experts do the heavy lifting for you. Find out which network storage devices belong in your home and will do the job you expect them to do. We look for products that are easy to use, reliable and feature packed and tell you what they are at NetworkStorageTips.com.

© 2005-2011 Article Dashboard