Tech Up! :NAS

Everyday from every side, you come across hundreds of adverts about things you "should" have. From chocolates and ice cream, to the latest perfume from some designer company. But how many of these products do we actually need? How many of these products have you bought and shelved after a few hours use? (Nintendo Wii anyone??)

Well, Tech UP! will have examples of technology that actually comes in useful, allowing you to be more mobile, more productive and possibly more relaxed.

Today's article is going to talk about something that is useful for anyone that has a digital life. Do you have multiple mp3's and movies on your computer at home? Do you have multiple computers that have the same copies of movies / mp3 stored on their drives, technically wasting precious space? Wouldnt it be nice if you had a backup system that would automatically make a second copy of all your photos and documents so that you dont have to worry about them even if your computer instantly detonates??

Well, luckily for us, something like that exists, and its called a Network Attached Storage (NAS). First of all, you must make sure you have a network already set up at your house, but most people with a digital life already have one, in spite of them not knowing :P So thats not something you need to worry about. The picture above shows a basic home NAS that should do the trick for most casual users. What happens is, that once you hook up the device to your network and follow some simple instructions on how to set it up, you have a virtual drive show up on your computer. Once there, you can transfer all your media to it, and it will be instantly available to anyone else on the network. That way sharing between computers and other DLNA devices (i will go into that another time) will be instant and effortless. There are advance features allowing for security and permissions for separate folders giving privacy for stuff you don't want to share. You can even set the NAS to download your torrents so you dont have to keep your pc on all night.

Other features of entry level NAS's include acting as a print server, so even printers can be shared through all pc's, a remote login system for people who need access to their data when they're away from home (great for laptop users), although the speed of that is limited to your internet connection uplink, which could make it a bit slow for larger files. And to top it all off, you can even hook up network security cameras to it, so it can monitor, record and even playback.

I hope that made you start to imagine the possibilities with how easy it can be to make your digital life slightly easier on you. As i post more things on Tech Up! i'm sure i'll be adding more devices that can make use of the NAS, adding you all empowering feeling of having technology do the work for you, and not vice versa.

If you have any questions, feel free to post below, and i'll be glad to share the knowledge :)

thanks for reading