What is a NAS device and how does it work?

Mac users might use Thunderbolt cables and ports. There are ways to share access to that hard drive with others, but usually, the hard drive is used exclusively by the computer it’s attached to. You might hear this referred to as direct-attached storage (DAS).

Mac users might use Thunderbolt cables and ports. There are ways to share access to that hard drive with others, but usually, the hard drive is used exclusively by the computer it’s attached to. You might hear this referred to as direct-attached storage (DAS).

This is what most of us do at home when we need more storage than our computer or laptop holds. Most often, you’d use a USB cable to connect a hard drive or SSD to your computer’s USB port.

Via a network. 

We’re referring to your local network at your business or in your home, which might be a hard-wired ethernet network or a WiFi-enabled

 network.

As mentioned above, storage devices connected to networks are called network-attached storage, or NAS, devices. NAS devices are configured for access via permissions to users on an internal network, though you can usually set up access to your NAS devices via the internet, should you choose to do so.

Wh

ile Cloud storage in the

W

ide

A

rea

N

etwork (WAN)

could be argued as the third method to connect computers and information as

highlighted

below

,

for sake of

this

discussion, we’ll confine ourselves to a local network

other than this brief note

.