Why Should You Use NAS Storage over External HDD for Your Files?

With file sizes on the rise, external HDD storage alone may not be enough. Many users enjoy the simplicity of plug-and-play coupled with large storage capacities of external drives. But as they lack remote access and security features, external hard drives have fallen behind as a storage medium.

For users ready to take data storage to the next level, network-attached storage, or NAS, offers many robust features to simplify storage and keep your backups secure. A NAS system is usually comprised of multiple hard drives in a RAID array to ensure they are always online and available, and you can connect a NAS to your wireless router so you can access it as long as you’re on the network. Buffalo NAS storage are designed to help you navigate modern file storage and backup easily and securely.

Benefits of Network-Attached Storage Over External Drives

Network-attached storage devices offer more functionality than external hard drives, allowing for operations such as remote storage data access by multiple users, more robust data protection and security, and flexible backup options.

1. Centralize Your Storage/Backup

Depending on the size of your files folder, one external hard drive may not be enough. This creates a hassle as you will have to shuffle an external drive from one computer to another to access specific files, and is there anything more frustrating than searching though countless folders on multiple hard drives just looking for that one file?

A Buffalo NAS will offer a larger capacity than typical external hard drives, so you can consolidate all your files into one location. Just connect to your network to access all your files and quickly find what you're looking for.

2. Secure Your Files with Robust Backup Options

Nothing is foolproof. No matter what kind of data you are keeping, you will need to have backups. Hard drive failures eventually occur, and with ransomware so rampant you can't trust files on your computer to always remain safe.

While you can regularly save files onto an external drive, it can be a hassle, or you can easily forget. Instead, Buffalo NAS are designed to make your backups effortless. You can schedule automatic backups to the NAS at regular intervals, so your data gets backed up even if you forget. What’s more, NAS also offers much more backup flexibility than external hard drives. If you use cloud storage, you can integrate the cloud service onto the NAS and back up data to and from the cloud. Network storage also opens up additional backup options such as off-site replication, so you choose the backup method and routine that works for you.

3. Share Your Files with Anyone, from Anywhere

Generally, most external drives are compact enough to be quite portable. You can carry them around in your pockets or a backpack, but you will have to physically ferry files from one computer to another to share them. Worse yet, what if the drive gets lost or stolen?

Why bother with carrying around all those devices when you can easily access your files on your NAS anytime, from anywhere? With a NAS, you can also remotely share any number of files or folders on the NAS. Buffalo NAS allows you to create a link to a specific file or folder on your NAS and send the link to anyone, and they will be able to securely access shared files without hassle. To share data locally, users will only need to connect to the network instead of connecting hard drives from one computer to another. You can also create and manage users with granulated access permissions so they will only access allowed folders.

4. Enhanced Data Protection

External hard drives often lack features to keep your data safe from online threats and hardware failures. But protecting your data is a breeze on network storage. NAS often offer RAID, which provides redundancy in a variety of scenarios. Depending on the RAID setup and usage scenario, you will still have access to your data, or simply restore your data by replacing a failed drive.

Buffalo NAS are purpose-built for data protection. In addition to RAID, our network devices run on a closed system, which prevents third-party apps from being installed and therefore tempering any possible vulnerabilities that may lead to malware. Buffalo NAS also offers security features such as native drive encryption to keep your data secure from external threats.

5. Effortless Home Media Sharing and Streaming

If you have a lot of media stored, you will need to connect the external hard drive to a computer to play media files, as it won't be able to run anything. On the other hand, you can set up a NAS as a media server, so you can share and stream media as you see fit.

Buffalo network storage is not just a secure storage and backup solution, you can also treat it as a media server that allows you to stream your content to a DLNA device or Plex.

6. Scalable Expansion

External hard drives come in fixed capacities. If you need more storage space, you really have no other options other than to delete current files to free up space, or go out and buy more.

On the other hand, if you run out of storage space on a NAS, there are options to expand capacity. Buffalo NAS can be purchased partially-populated, with not every drive bay filled, so you can enjoy a low cost of entry and expand the capacity later as you see fit. If you need to expand the capacity of the NAS itself, you will have a multitude of options, from integrating cloud storage to use iSCSI and connect multiple storage devices together into the same storage network.

The Buffalo Network Storage Solution

With more and more data being created and shared every day, traditional external hard drives are simply not sufficient to handle data volumes produced. External drives lack flexible storage accessibility and strong data security. Buffalo’s network-attached storage devices are purpose-built for security, simplicity, and stability. We designed our NAS devices to provide a modern work and leisure data storage and backup solution that is efficient and secure, so you can store your data with peace of mind.