Do you own a NAS and are you looking after it well?

Synology NAS box

Synology, one manufacturer of NAS box’s

A strange question for the uninitiated. What is a NAS and what sort of food does it eat and how should I be treating it?

My focus recently has been all about storage and the space we are each using to store our data. (Whatever that data maybe). From faster drives to access the data to storage solution on the cloud and in the office. It is one of the most important and common questions I am asked.

One solution doesn’t meet everyone’s needs. But a combination of solutions is usually what people use and sometimes chaotically with no thought on how this will progress and what the strategy is or should be.

So what is a NAS?

Well, it isn’t a small creature that keeps you company and helps with your storage and access to data. Well, that is not completely true it does allow storage and access to data in various ways and will cleverly backup said data in different ways. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. A system of storage media that is attached to your network at home or work. Over the years this type of storage has become more and more intelligent and can literally be a self-contained computer system that runs all your data and data access. It can be a small unit to a much larger unit. Various companies make them and they are, well what can I say I am biased, brilliant.

I have used one for business for over 8 years now and it has served me well. I can store data on it and it has internal drives that automatically backup to each other creating what is called a mirror of my data. I also can, and have configured it to back up to a cloud drive and have chosen the important data to back up in this way. So I have offsite data as well.

The NAS unit allows me to access it remotely over the Internet, (Through a secure connection), so my own personal cloud drive with access. I can add users and give them a proportion of the space and they can store their data there and we can collaborate on data.

Benefits

This is a lower costs system to having a fully-fledged file server in your office and still allows multiple access by users and storage and remote access. It has a configuration panel that is easy to understand and configure. An admin is appointed and can add users, block users and configure all the aspects of the system. The amount of storage is up to you and your budget. But it can be easy to handle and allow for expansion to a cloud drive or even to add extra space at the NAS unit itself.

Remember the biggest asset to any business is data and the importance of data and how easy it is to access it and collaborate using it is important.

So if you are considering storage and where it all goes?

It’s a Hard drive now a days.

computer harddriveI am asked by a lot of people about the new SSD drives as they call them, (In fact, this type of storage has been around for a while, granted it is developing and getting smarter and better all the time.), However, I digress. They ask me if the guarantee on this type of storage is as good as the older platter hard drives that stored their data to a physical disk using magnetism.

Well, there are many factors that affect both types of storage and cause them to fail or basically run out of life.

I stumbled across an article by CNet and they explain the way both drives work and how the SSD drive is much more complicated but in essence with last much longer. They are some actions you can do to help this but don’t panic you really don’t need to do them.

Check out the article here. (All credits here to Cnet.)

SSD or Platter Hard Drives

Let me know your thoughts on storage and your preferred drive type.