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What is a NAS drive?

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. In other words some storage that is connected to your wired or WiFi network at home or in the office.

A NAS device is a dedicated mini computer consisting of one or more hard drives which are then set up so that your PCs, Apple Macs, iPhones and Android devices can see the space, save stuff to them and also pull stuff from them.

NAS devices for the home tend to be relatively small and quiet devices that sip power and are designed to run 24 hours a day, whereas large offices might have bigger devices mounted in specialist racks.

NAS devices can store any kind of file that you might store on a computer or mobile device and are ideal for use as backup devices when set up correctly, offering peace of mind if something goes wrong with your computer.

There are many makes and model size of NAS to fit all budgets. The Synology devices are some of our favourites as they tend to come with lots of additional software that you can install, much of it is free to enhance the capabilities of the NAS from a simple storage device to a complex security camera recording system for example.

There is another device type called SAN which might seem the same as a NAS at first glance, however SANs tend to be used in enterprise environments and operate in a different way.