A couple of months ago, I mentioned my interest in NAS devices aimed at consumers; specifically offerings from Infrant and Buffalo. It now appears that Thermaltake, makers of many fine PC cases, power supplies and cooling fans, are offering a NAS device. I’m trying to round up as many reviews and comparisons as possible and now I have Thermaltake’s to add to the mix.
Pondering things like paint colours and furniture placement are probably common to anyone preparing to move into a new home, and Dena and I are no exception. Yet I’m also constantly thinking about where I am going to put my stuff. “Stuff”, in this context, refers to digital possessions such as music, data files and such. Up until a few years ago, most people didn’t need to concern themselves with places to store data in their house, but I think it makes sense to do so now. I have a lot of data and I constantly create/accumulate more everyday, and a house is (usually) bigger than an apartment. It would be nice to have access to that data in as many rooms as possible.
Some may think this whole NAS kick I’ve been on recently is overkill or is a for-geeks-only type of project, but I beg to differ. A NAS device now makes about as much sense as a washing machine and refrigerator, since I’m sure nobody would want to do laundry by hand and store their food in an ice chest anymore. If you have a digital camera, I bet you have pictures and videos stored on a desktop computer. Come everyone, gather around the computer in the office-cum-spare bedroom and watch the videos from lil’ Johnny’s first birthday party? Or if you have a laptop, you can huddle around that or click-click pass it around. And what happens if the hard drive in said desktop or laptop computer dies and all of your digital memories are lost? Did you back it up? Did you back it up to a recordable CD or DVD or perhaps an external hard drive? Did you back it up since you copied those latest pictures and videos over? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to keep your important data somewhere that’s accessible on your home network and has the failsafe benefits of a RAID configuration? That’s the beauty of a NAS device. Sure, I could build a “server” to do the same thing, but a NAS device would accomplish the task more efficiently from a power consumption point-of-view. I’d love to keep my data files, music and movies on a NAS device so that it’s all accessible from any computer in the house, be it a desktop computer, a laptop computer or a media center PC. Gathering in the living room around a TV connected to a media center PC to watch home videos would be much nice than in the office-cum-spare bedroom. Thanks to Thermaltake, my decision on a NAS device would suit us just got more complicated, but in a good way 🙂
