What is a NAS?

NAS is short for Network Attached Storage. Usually it is a box running RAID1 or RAID5, which can be connected to your network and looks like a shared network drive. Then you can access it from any of your computers.

Very often the NAS has a lot of extra features built in, such as photo sharing, bittorrent download, iTunes support and more. If you have multiple NAS boxes of the same brand, your can often set them up to synchronize with each other. This can be used to creates a cheap and automatic offsite backup.

A NAS is a very easy way of running RAID and at the same time get easy access to your data.