What is NAS?

[briannacarter448]

Hi,

What is NAS and why it is required ?

Thanks

[Isabella]

NAS or Network Attached Storage is a system of one or more hard disks, an Ethernet connection and an OS. This system connects to network, allowing those on the network to access and share files from a central location, along with a group of other helpful stuff.

When it comes to NAS, sharing can mean multiple things. We can share files, share storage capacity and even share a printer.

Sharing Files

If we have several computers, there has probably been many times when you wanted to have one or files on more than one computer (these files can be documents, music, videos, photos, etc). This is the basic problem that NAS solves. In its simplest form, you can think of NAS as an external hard drive that lives next to your router and is accessible by all the computers. And just like an external hard drive, NAS is easy to store and access files – just drag and drop.

Media Streaming

We can also allow other devices such as an HD media player to access our media collection. An HD media player is a device that connects to our TV like a DVD player, but can play photos, movies and music from a hard drive connected to it or take files from our NAS. The attractiveness of NAS is that we can store all of your media in one place and access it from anywhere. We can have a media player in every room and have them all simultaneously access files from just one NAS device. That means we don’t need to constantly move drives around everywhere or keep several copies of the same content.

Remote Access

Most NAS devices have the capacity to not only store our files, but make them accessible to us anywhere in the world! With just a few clicks.

Printer Sharing

Most of us have a USB printer. We bought it because it was so cheap (until we bought ink for it). It does its job well, but can be a pain when someone other else needs to use it, and that person’s computer isn’t the primary computer connected to the printer. NAS devices like the GoFlex Home network storage system allow us to connect a USB printer to the back of it and then share that printer with every PC and Mac. It presents the same convenience we have at work where we and our colleges share a printer.

Backup

We all know how essential our files are to us and we all know we should back them up; NAS makes it so simple that we really no longer have an reason not to do it. During the initial setup, it installs the included backup software, takes care of the configuration for us and from then on continuously backs up the files and folders on our computer. Plus, just one network storage system can protect all the PCs and Macs. And better yet, it cost just a minuscule bit more than a single external hard drive.

[alexandermartin42]

NAS is a dedicated server, used for file storage and sharing. NAS is a hard drive connected to a network, utilized for storage and accessed through an allotted network address. It performs as a server for file sharing. It allows the addition of more storage space to available networks even when the system is shutdown during maintenance.

[emmasmith632]

A NAS system is a network-connected storage device that allows authorised network users and heterogeneous clients to store and retrieve data from a centralised place. NAS systems are adaptable and scale-out, which means you may expand your storage capacity as needed.

[lopezhannah966]

A file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network that provides data access to a diverse collection of clients is known as network-attached storage (NAS). By virtue of its hardware, software, or configuration, NAS is designed to serve files.