Some of these systems use many drives in RAID for redundancy or speed, while others rely on a single drive bay for much smaller operations. Network-attached storage is designed to be scalable, with many solutions allowing you to simply add or replace drives when you run out of space. There are all sorts of uses for a NAS system, including storing shared documents, sharing group projects, streaming media like music and videos, or backing up local machines. NAS devices make it easy to share a pool of storage between an entire network of computers and other devices. Other machines on the network can connect to a NAS to read and write data as if the drive were connected to their computer directly. NAS stands for “Network Attached Storage,” while NAS devices are referred to as “NAS drives” or “NAS systems.” They act as centralized network shares for use over a local network.
