The ideal situation would be: Being able to store all your photos, videos, music and documents in a central location and being able to transfer them to a device of your choice. You can transfer a film you’ve recorded to your TV, holiday photos to your tablet, music to the stereo system and documents to your notebook.
Network-attached storage allows for this type of central access, as well as automatic back-ups of your data. We’ll explain what network-attached storage involves and what you can do with it.
Network-attached storage for optimum data back-up
Network-attached storage offers excellent options for backing up data. In a NAS system with two or more hard drives, you can specify that data is stored on a HDD and the other hard drives automatically back-up the data from the selected drives (“mirror imaging”). It’s also possible to plug a USB stick or an external hard drive into the NAS and automatically copy over all the data onto the NAS.
Network-attached storage — more than just one or several hard drives
NAS stands for Network-Attached Storage. We often refer to NAS hard drives. But NAS is clearly much more than just one or several hard drives. Rather, a NAS is a small computer with housing that includes a processor and operating system (usually Linux) and hard drive(s). The PC controls network-attached storage, via software or in the browser, for example. The NAS is simply connected to the router, via cable or WiFi (which slows things down).
Who is allowed to do what with network-attached storage, and how does it work in principle?
You, the administrator, are in the driving seat. For example, you can create individual accounts for members of your family, restrict the storage space of these accounts and determine who has access to what content.
This makes it really easy to retrieve data on the various devices. Find the NAS on the computer/notebook under network and connect. For smartphones and tablet PCs, manufacturers provide free apps for watching a film in bed on your tablet, for example. It’s also possible to watch videos on TV if it is DLNA-compliant.
Finally, here are a few more examples of where a NAS can be useful:
• Mobility: The manufacturer’s apps allow you to show your holiday photos on your tablet outside of your home, at your parents’ house, for example. Images can also be sent directly from your smartphone on holiday to your home network storage, which frees up storage space on your phone.
• Printers: Can almost always be connected to the NAS. This means any network device can print easily.
Image source: Adobe Stock, Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
