In our digital world everyone needs storage and everyone needs speed. Whether for business or home use, storing, backing up and serving large applications, such as video, requires more than your ordinary PC can deliver.

An easy solution, on both small and large scales, is a NAS - a Network-attached Storage device. For those who are unfamiliar with this revolutionary technology, it can be described simply as multiple hard drives housed within one device. These multiple drives form a RAID system (redundant array of independent disks), meaning that the same data is stored across multiple disks thereby safeguarding it against disk failure and increasing its delivery speed and availability.

A NAS is a very simple yet powerful solution. This compact ‘box' is attached to a PC or to a local area network, (typically an Ethernet network) and assigned an IP address. Once in place, the NAS not only provides a huge boost to your storage space, it also ensures that your data can be served efficiently and that it is backed up. By removing these functions, of storage, data access and management, from your server or PC, application programming and files can be served much faster because they're not competing for the same processor resources.

Any shutdowns or upgrades you need to do on your usual system no longer affects your data as it is now stored independently.

As your NAS is effectively a server in its own right, it opens up a myriad of new capabilities, such as running an entire small business network. 

At home it can enhance your home theatre system by acting as a media server to serve all your digital movies and photos at speeds not previously seen before.