#Best nas for home network full#
#Best nas for home network software#
#Best nas for home network Pc#
#Best nas for home network plus#

Who this is forĪ network-attached storage device, or NAS, is a small always-on computer generally used for backing up computers and serving files to devices on your local network. He has professionally backed up data as diverse as news stories on plane crashes and Mariah Carey album art.

Prior to writing for a living, Joel was an IT tech and sysadmin for small, medium, and large companies.

#Best nas for home network Pc#

He has set up more backup systems, from NAS to cloud storage, for family members and friends than he cares to count.īefore joining Wirecutter, Joel Santo Domingo tested and wrote about PCs, networking products, storage, and personal tech at PCMag and PC Magazine for more than 17 years. Thorin Klosowski wrote about consumer electronics for more than six years at Lifehacker and has extensive experience with Linux and DIY NAS devices. This NAS is best suited for professionals or anyone who wants to expand a NAS system with more storage down the line. Since this model has two more bays than our top pick, you can use different storage configurations that offer better data protection and performance. You have access to all the same mobile apps for streaming, backup, and everything else the DS218+ offers. It has one fewer USB port, but it adds another Gigabit Ethernet port for link aggregation, which can increase performance if you have a compatible router and multiple people use your NAS at once.

If you need more storage space, the Synology DiskStation DS418play uses the same CPU, hardware encryption engine, and hardware transcoding engine as the DS218+, but it adds two drive bays.

#Best nas for home network software#

It uses the same QTS management interface as QNAP's other NAS devices-we like Synology's DSM software a little more, but it's largely a matter of preference. It is almost as fast during file transfers as the DS218+ and adds an HDMI-out port so you can hook it up to a TV for media playback. The QNAP TS-251B is a good choice if the DS218+ is out of stock, or if you want to display media on a TV. You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu. You can use the DS218+ as a home backup device, a media streamer, a mail server, a website-hosting device, a BitTorrent box, or a video-surveillance recorder-nearly anything you can do with a Linux computer, while consuming about as much electricity as a couple of LED bulbs. It also supports a wide range of third-party apps, such as Plex, BitTorrent Sync, and GitLab.

#Best nas for home network plus#

In addition to speed, the Synology DiskStation DS218+ offers a variety of backup and syncing options, plus it has mobile apps for media streaming, file management, and more. The fastest NAS we tested, it offers powerful hardware for the price, includes AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration for added security, has upgradable RAM, and comes with software that's easy to use.

#Best nas for home network full#

Read the full NAS for most home users guide here.Īfter testing five new two-bay network-attached storage (NAS) devices and comparing them against our previous picks, we found that the Synology DiskStation DS218+ is the best home NAS for most people.

When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. By Thorin Klosowski and Joel Santo Domingo