Secondly, if you lose your computer or the hard drive that stores your data, you are out of luck. Your data is gone and you will have to start from scratch.

Cloud storage services make it easy to access data stored on a single external hard drive from anywhere in the world on any device.

Cloud storage is a great way to store your data, but it comes with some security risks. If you want the advantages of cloud storage, but the security of having everything locally stored, you should consider setting up personal cloud storage. Again, you’ll get all the mobile and desktop apps and everything will be synced, but you’ll have the data stored locally on your own devices.

Google Drive is a great way to store large amounts of data, but you’ll have to pay for its monthly fees if you want to use it over 1TB. For example, after the 1 TB plan on Google Drive, it skips to 10 TB and you have to spend $99 a month.

With OneDrive, you can only add more space after 1 TB in 50 GB increments. Each 50 GB increment costs $1.99. To get to 10 TB, you’d have to pay a whopping $360 a month! With Dropbox, you can add up to 2TB for free with a Pro account and up to 10TB for $9.99/month for business accounts with at least 5 users. ..

Understanding Network Hard Drives

A NAS device is a computer-based storage device that can be connected to the internet and used as a storage space for files. It is often cheaper and easier to use than a network hard drive. A network attached storage device (NAS) is a computer-based storage device that is not connected to the internet but can be used as a storage space for files. It is often more expensive and harder to use than a NAS.

A network hard drive is a single hard drive inside a device that connects to the network and provides a web interface to control and access data. A NAS has multiple hard drives that can be configured in a RAID array, thereby providing data protection.

If you’re looking for a single network hard drive solution, I recommend avoiding them because they’re essentially the same thing as using a regular external hard drive, except you get all the cloud features. However, if the hard drive fails, you lose all your data - which may or may not be duplicated elsewhere.

The WD My Cloud Personal NAS is a network hard drive that can be used as a NAS.

NAS devices are great for storing large amounts of data, and you can get 8TB worth of storage for around $400. However, be aware that if one drive fails, your data will be lost. By using a RAID array, you can protect your data even in the event of a drive failure. ..

NAS devices offer a great way to organize your data and make it easier to access. However, you may lose some storage space if you use RAID configurations. For example, if you take the 8 TB NAS above and use RAID 1, you’ll only have 4 TB of free space. If you use RAID 5, you’ll need at least 3 drives, but will get two-thirds of the total space of all three drives. ..

For creative professionals, 8 TB of storage is more than enough. You can get a 16 TB NAS for around $750, so even if you only have 8 TB of storage, it’s still cheaper than buying a separate hard drive for each individual user. ..

Other Benefits of a NAS

NAS devices offer a lot of benefits beyond their personal cloud capabilities. Some of the benefits include:

  • Being able to sync your data across all your different devices
  • Supporting all the features of NAS devices

The Multi-Bay NAS with RAID can be used to store and access video files, music, photos, and other files. It can also be used as a FTP server, web server, mail server, and more. The NAS can be connected to other devices for easy sharing.

NAS devices are great for storing your data and making it available to all of your devices. They’re also great for sharing files with other people, and they can even be used as a backup solution. ..

Personal Cloud Storage Solutions

The best NAS devices are those that have a personal cloud option and can be used with a suite of apps.

Synology

I personally have a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra and a Synology DS 411+II and I find the Synology to be an amazing device. The software running on the NAS is excellent and is almost like using Windows. The Synology DS 411+II is several years old, but can still be updated to the latest version of DSM (DiskStation Manager). ..

Synology is a great NAS company that has several mobile apps that work well for managing the NAS, viewing your files, streaming photos and videos and for managing your personal cloud. What I like about Synology is that they are constantly updating their hardware and software so that it supports the latest technology. They also have a lot of different models with a wide price range.

If you’re not sure which one would work for you, just use their NAS selector tool. If you’re not a technical person, no worries. Adding hard drives to these devices is very simple and straight-forward. You can also often buy them with the drives already installed. ..

Western Digital My Cloud

The other product I would recommend is WD’s My Cloud and My Cloud EX series. Overall, these devices are great, but they lack the feature set and finesse of the Synology products. I found them to be a little harder to setup and I didn’t like the selection of mobile apps.

Synology and WD both have a lot of features, but the WD My Cloud is better because it has fewer features.

The Expert Series is a more powerful NAS with added cloud capabilities. ..

Seagate

Seagate has recently entered the NAS market with their Personal Cloud Storage drives. I recommend doing your research before purchasing anything from Seagate, as their products have not been extensively tested by the media. ..

There are a lot of choices for personal cloud storage, but these are the best options right now. If something new comes out or something better, I’ll be sure to update this post with that information. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!