Do not buy a network attached storage device without NAS RAID and then lose your data. Beware, though, of the information vendors provide. Find out what the terminology means, how to buy and configure a NAS device to do what you want it to do and above all protect your data.
NAS RAID is an acronym for a Network Attached Storage device that uses Redundant Array of Independent Disks to protect you from losing data when an individual hard drive in that NAS device dies.
Notice I said
"when" a hard drive dies instead of
"if". Hard drives are like light bulbs,
they may last an hour or a million hours. The problem is that you never know when it will fail; but eventually, they all do.
It is common for all of us to try to buy a product that costs the least amount of money. Unfortunately, comparing an inexpensive storage device that does not implement NAS RAID to one that does is like comparing apples to, well, asparagus.
Consolidating your data from multiple computers onto a network attached storage device yields you many benefits, including the ability to more easily backup that data.
But just because it is easier to backup does not mean you will. Yes, a good NAS device will have the ability to automatically backup to an online backup service but that is a topic for another article.
Even if you do have your data backed up, when that single hard drive dies in your storage device two things will happen:
1.) All data added or changed since the last backup is lost.
2.) Your network storage device, and your data stored there, is unavailable until you get that hard drive replaced, your NAS reconfigured and running, and have your data restored. The restore alone could take days depending on where the backup data resides and the quantity of data.
Can you see how buying a storage device without NAS RAID can be dangerous to your data and your ability to access it when you need it?
Even then there are various levels of RAID protection that can be employed on any network storage server. RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 are commonly referred to.
It is CRITICAL to understand that RAID 0 does NOT protect your data. I kind of wish they would not even call it RAID lest people be misled and lose data as a result.
RAID 0 combines multiple disks to form a larger, faster access data volume but it does not have any redundancy about it, hence my preference to not call it RAID. If you lose one drive in a RAID 0 array, you will lose data.
Unfortunately, when you buy a network storage device, the vendor will advertise the "size" of the NAS device based on a RAID 0 configuration, which typically is not even the default configuration.
It is no wonder so many consumers are confused when they power up their new 2 terabyte network attached storage device and see that they have 930 gigabytes of storage available! (This is common with a 2 terabyte unit comprised of two hard disks of one terabyte nominal storage each.)
RAID 1 and RAID 5 do protect your data with redundant hard drives. Often a network storage server will give you multiple options on how to configure the RAID protection if you have more than two hard drives installed.
With just two drives, RAID 1 is your only choice.
Find out how to buy a network storage device that has the capacity you expect it to have and
NAS RAID properly configured to protect the data you store on it.
Do not be fooled or disappointed after making a purchase; worse yet grieve over lost data. Get the complete facts at
http://NetworkStorageTips.com .
