Digital Home Thoughts: Get the Skinny on Three NAS Devices

"In this article, we're going to present three network-attached storage (NAS) devices from well-known vendors Qnap, Promise, and Co-World. These devices are as different as their makers. This becomes increasingly evident as we start digging into their performance benchmarks and describe their overall capabilities, storage capacity, and target markets / audiences."

Movies, music, photos and documents are all getting larger and larger. As the storage demands for a digital home have increased, many of us have switched to using a Network-Attached-Storage device to handle our archiving needs. Not only can they server as a central repository for all your files, but they can also act as a backup for files you keep on your computer. Unfortunately not all NAS devices are equal, and depending on what you intend on using your NAS for, especially important for those that playback HD quality video, what NAS you pick is extremely important. Tom's Hardware goes through three different ones intended for home or SOHO use. What really surprised me was the range in performance between the devices. Still, for me, a more complete solution such as the HP EX-485/7 boxes are more tempting with the added features it provides, but I imagine some of you still like the old school approach these NAS devices offer.