What's Home NAS?

A NAS, whether domestic or professional, is a network attached storage space. Composed of one or more spaces (called bays) intended to receive hard drives, the NAS has several functions since it allows to store data, but also to secure and share it.

It also offers the possibility of easily broadcasting multimedia content to any device on the same network (smartphone, TV, tablet, etc.). At home, using a NAS is therefore practical on a daily basis if you want to share family photos, watch high quality movies or even avoid the loss of precious files. This private cloud also gives access to all files stored even outside the home.

Home NAS devices are ideal, not onnly for storing all the family photos and videos, but also for viewing all the movies from your computers on the TV or sharing files between all the members of the family, the home NAS offers a multitude of possibilities and advantages. Explore the other 3 tabs to learn about the benefits of having a Network Attached Storage at home, how to buy the model that suits you and our top picks for Home NAS.

How to choose ? What is the point of creating your own NAS server ? What are the best 2020 home NAS models?

Although the use of a personal NAS is not as intensive as that of a professional NAS , it is important to choose the right equipment to have enough space available to store all the data and enjoy the comfort of your home. optimal use. Among the main elements that should catch your attention are the number of bays, the desired RAID, the maxiumum available space, the ease of use and the processor. Read on to get an idea about each of these factors and how to handle them.

Criteria for choosing your Home NAS

• the number of bays : this is one of the main criteria for choosing a NAS since it is this which determines the storage capacity of the whole. Depending on the number of hard drives present, you can also set up different levels of RAID. In general, for a home NAS, a maximum of 4 bays is sufficient and limits the risk of being disturbed by noise during the operation of the NAS;
• the desired RAID : RAID is a data security technology. There are several levels of security: depending on the level chosen, the data is either mirrored on 2 hard disks (which therefore divides by 2 the total space available on all disks), or distributed in a fragmented manner over the set of disks. The greater the number of disks, the less chance there is of losing data without wasting too much storage space;
• the maximum available space : this data depends of course on the size of each hard drive (knowing that if you install 2 hard drives of different capacity, the NAS will only support the capacity of the smallest drive), but also on the capacity of the NAS. This data, called the maximum simple volume size, corresponds to the maximum storage capacity of a NAS, regardless of the size of the hard disks mounted on it. For example, a NAS with a maximum single volume size of 16 TB will not be able to see this capacity increase, even if the total volume of all its hard drives is greater;
• ease of use : depending on your computer skills, using a NAS will be more or less easy. If you are a novice, be sure to choose a model that is simple, both to set up and to use. Some references, such as the Synology DS218 +, for example do not require screwing to install 3.5 '' hard drives. As for the web interface, also opt for an intuitive solution as found at QNAP and Synology;
• the processor : again, your needs will depend on your expectations. If you are a novice user, a Dual Core processor and 512MB of RAM will be sufficient. For more multimedia use, opt instead for a Quad Corre processor with at least 1 GB of RAM; the interfaces : between cameras, you will have access to different connectors. A criterion that is important! Number of USB ports, 10 Gigabit Ethernet port or even HDMI output to directly connect the NAS to a screen: think carefully about the use you will have of your NAS before you decide.

Advantages of having a Home NAS

One of the things that most users care about today is protecting our privacy. Therefore, if we decide to do with a home server, a very important advantage is that the data is still in our possession . The difference is clear, since if we rent a hosting service, or a "Cloud" service, they are the ones who control our personal data.

Another positive point is that we can configure it as we want, i.e. we have great flexibility . In this sense, we could choose:

• The operating system we want to use, as long as we do not choose NAS servers from brands such as QNAP, Synology or ASUSTOR, which already come with a Linux operating system preinstalled.
• The functions we want to give you, by installing the corresponding software.
• The security we want to establish.
• Choose the desired storage size.
• On the other hand, we can also schedule our backups. In this sense, we could choose the schedule that interests us the most and how often we want this backup to be done.