The market is really opening up in the mid-range segment. Your money would be better off in a two-bay network-tied storage box. However, a single-bay NAS does not give you an opportunity for redundancy, cannot be used to further expand storage, and is usually limited in its processing capabilities. If you’re on a budget, you might be tempted to buy a single-bay NAS drive. Once you’ve decided on the number of bays you need for your usage, you can look into additional factors like hardware transcoding for media content, the onboard software suite, and port choices. These two factors are crucial when deciding how many storage bins you need. Buy the right NAS drive for your needsīuying a good NAS storage box can be daunting, but the decision usually boils down to how much storage you expect and how much redundancy you want. NAS drives can even be a backup destination for all your phones and computers. It’s a great solution for running your personal media server, a central photo storage station, or for sharing files around the house. Offline access also remains an issue, and sharing files with large groups can be tedious.Ī NAS drive, or Network Attached Storage, is the logical solution to many of these problems.

For one, they come with a cost and offer no guarantee of how long the service will remain active.

Although many users prefer cloud services for backups, they are not always the best solution for having constant data access or ensuring your data stays private.

Best nas for home user