Transcript:
Do you want to keep your data more secure, conveniently access your files and save money all at the same time? In this podcast episode, I will tell you about Networked Attached Storage (NAS, for short). With a small investment up front a NAS is a great way to store your data securely and access it from anywhere in the world.
About a year ago I bought a Mac laptop from Costco to share with my wife as our home computer. I pretty quickly realized it did not have adequate storage for all our needs. My wife and I have two young children and we take a lot of pictures; I also make videos and podcasts for graduate school and other ventures. We needed a way to quickly and easily store large files without taking up space on our Mac.
Apple has also moved away from USB ports on their machines to USB-C, so we would need adapters to plug in old flash drives and external hard drives to access our content.
Google Drive is the answer, some of you may be thinking. Google is a great option for users who don’t have a lot of data to store (and don’t mind a large company having access to your data). But there are monthly fees associated with storing data on Google Drive after the first 15 GBs, something that was a real turn-off for me. I’m more interested in paying a little more up front for a one-time cost than adding another monthly bill.
After doing some research I discovered that a NAS, a small, boxy computer, was a great solution to this problem. NASes on Amazon go for as low as $150, and internal 4 terabyte hard drives sell for around $100. With those items, a few screws and an ethernet cord, I set up our family’s personal networked storage. After two years of use this NAS will have paid for itself in savings — and most Google users certainly pay longer than two year’s worth of fees. I also have 4 terabytes of networked storage — much more than the 100 gigs Google wanted to charge me for.
For folks who like the portability of a laptop but work with large audio and video files, a NAS is a great option. They are relatively secure — there are probably more hackers targeting Google than me as a solo user. You can access your content from anywhere on the web, making the storage much more convenient than a hard drive, and they are less expensive than that long-term monthly fees cloud storage companies want to charge.
Check the show notes for additional information, device recommendations, and how-to videos.
Links:
Synology NAS $165
Seagate Ironwolf 4T Hard Drive, $104
Set-up Tutorial by Linus Tech Tips
