Protecting Your Family’s Data Using Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Computers are currently so cheap that it’s not uncommon for an average family to have two, three or even four machines in their house. And as the number of household machines grows, so do the challenges associated with protecting them.
If you consider the fact that the average hard drive has roughly a 1 in 10 chance of crashing in any given year… that means your house might have a 30% or higher chance of losing a large amount of important or cherished data.

One of the biggest problems amongst home computer users is that they generally have terrible backup habits. Many home users will back up less than twice a year… and usually only if the computer is starting to act funny.
Another problem is that – with home computing – you are effectively tethered to your machine by your information. If you want to use a different computer, you won’t be able to access your personal files unless you copy them to a USB drive. And then you have to worry about the headache of synchronizing different versions of the same file across different storage devices.
It can all get very confusing. There is, however, a more elegant solution.
By setting up a Network Attached Storage in your home, you can save everyone’s data to a single storage device. This way, everyone in your family can get secure, private access to their files from any computer in the home… or even from remote machines over the Internet.

Another great advantage of having a home NAS is that you can simplify and automate the backup of all your home machines. In fact, if you set up a Linux-based NAS, there are a number of online backup services which can automatically protect this data for you.
Having a home NAS box also offers other interesting benefits for home users such as:
· You can link it up with your gaming consoles
· You can use it as a streaming music server
· You can have it download torrents for you (only legal ones, of course)
· You can use it as a web server
· Etc…
How to set up a Network Attached Storage?
Of course, if you have money to spend, you can go to any computer store and buy a pre-built NAS device. But if you’re short on cash, you can also build your own for free.
Do you have an old computer lying around? Don’t throw it out just yet! FreeNAS is a free, open-source program that can turn any old computer into a NAS device. The program is very light-weight so that it can run on very slow machines without any trouble, and the user-interface is designed to be simple enough for most beginners.
http://freenas.org/
The software comes with a lot of great features already built-in, and it’s supported by a passionate open-source community that is constantly adding new functionality and tools.
Set up a Network Attatched Storage for family today, and take your home networking to the next level.
Guest post by Storagepipe Solutions which provides online backup with support for many different operating systems such as Linux, IBM iSeries, Windows, Mac and more.