A NAS for the Home and Small Office: Why You'd Want One, How to Choose It and Why RAID Isn't a Backup

A family has three laptops and four phones; a small office has five computers and a shared printer. Photos sit on phones, work documents on different computers, contracts are sent back and forth over messengers, and backups are made "when someone remembers". Network-attached storage, or a NAS, solves this: it's a small computer with drives that sits at home or in the office, connects to the router and stores shared files and backups for everyone. Let's look at who needs a NAS, how to choose one and how to set it up so it protects your data rather than creating new risks.

What a NAS can do

• Shared folders — every computer on the network works with the same files: documents, estimates, databases.
• Automatic backups — of computers on a schedule, and of phone photos as soon as they're taken.
• A media library — films, music and photos available on the TV, phone and tablet.
• A personal cloud — access to your files from anywhere in the world without a monthly cloud subscription.
• CCTV recording — many NAS units can record IP cameras.

NAS or cloud

Cloud storage is convenient and needs no maintenance, but large capacities mean paying every month, speed depends on your internet connection, and your data is held by a third party. A NAS needs a one-off investment and setup, but gives you a lot of space, high speed on the local network and full control over your data. For many people the best option is a NAS as the main store plus the cloud for a copy of the most important files.

How to choose a NAS

• The number of drive bays. A two-bay NAS is the minimum for reliable storage: the drives run as a mirror. For an office and larger volumes, four bays.
• The manufacturer and software. Ready-made NAS units from well-known brands offer a friendly web interface, phone apps and regular security updates. That matters more than processor power.
• Networking. A gigabit port is enough for the home; for working with large files, 2.5 Gbit/s — but then the computers and router must support it too.
• Drives. NAS units use special drives designed for round-the-clock operation. Ordinary desktop drives and drives using SMR recording work less well in a NAS and can cause problems when the array is rebuilt.

RAID: protection against drive failure

RAID combines several drives. In mirror mode (RAID 1), data is written to two drives at once: if one fails, everything remains on the other, and the faulty drive can be replaced without losing data. Four-bay NAS units often use RAID 5 or 6, where part of the capacity goes to protection. RAID 0 combines drives for speed and capacity, but if any one of them fails, everything is lost — it's unsuitable for important data.

RAID is not a backup

This is the most common and dangerous mistake. RAID only protects against a drive failing. If a file is deleted by mistake, encrypted by a virus, or the NAS is fried by a power surge or stolen, every copy in the array is affected at once. So important data on a NAS also needs copying: to an external drive kept separately, or to the cloud. Snapshots are useful too — saved states of folders that let you roll back, for example after a ransomware attack.

Security

• Remote access — exposing a NAS directly to the internet through port forwarding is dangerous: these devices are attacked en masse by ransomware. It's safer to use the manufacturer's remote access services or a VPN.
• Updates — the NAS firmware and apps need regular updating.
• Accounts — separate users with the right permissions, the default admin account disabled, strong passwords and two-factor authentication.
• Power — a UPS protects the NAS and drives from surges and sudden outages, which aren't unusual in Tbilisi.

Common problems

• Computers can't see the NAS on the network or lose their connection to shared folders.
• Slow file access because of Wi-Fi or an old network switch.
• The array shows as "degraded" — one of the drives has failed and the owner missed the notification.
• The NAS won't switch on — the data is still on the drives, but it needs to be retrieved carefully without breaking the array's structure.

What our technician does

1. Assesses your needs and data volume and selects a NAS and suitable drives.
2. Installs and sets up the NAS, RAID, shared folders, users and access rights.
3. Sets up backups of computers and phones, snapshots, and a copy of the NAS to an external drive or the cloud.
4. Arranges secure remote access and drive health notifications.
5. Checks and, if needed, upgrades the local network and connects a UPS.

A real example

A small design firm on Plekhanovi Avenue kept its drawings on one computer with sharing turned on. When that computer's drive started failing, work stopped for two days. We installed a two-bay NAS in mirror mode, moved the projects onto it, set up access rights for staff, hourly snapshots and nightly copies to an external drive and the cloud, and connected a UPS. Six months later one of the NAS drives failed — the firm got a notification, we replaced the drive, and none of the staff even noticed there had been a problem.

Call a technician

If you'd like to bring order to your files at home or in the office and protect them from loss, we'll come to any district of Tbilisi around the clock. Learn more on our local network setup, data recovery and router setup pages.