Share and share alike

Media matters
While price, size and ease of use are the most important features that you need to think about, some Nas drives offer other features that can also come in handy. Most Nas drives also have USB ports built into them. These allow you to connect additional USB hard disks to the Nas drive.

The USB drive will then act like another Nas drive – allowing you to add even more storage to your network at very low cost. You may also be able to connect a printer to one of these USB ports, allowing everyone on the network to use the same printer.

One really important feature to look out for is something known as UPnP – ‘universal plug and play’. This allows the Nas drive to work with media player devices such as the popular Soundbridge or Pinnacle’s Showcenter.

Ordinarily, you need to store all your music and video files on a PC and transmit (or ‘stream’) those files from the PC to the media player. But if the media player and Nas drive are both UPnP-compatible then you can stream files from the Nas drive straight to the media player without even having to turn on the PC. Iomega’s StorCenter is UPnP-compatible, as are rival Nas drives from Freecom and Maxtor.

It’s also possible to store music and video files that are protected with Microsoft’s DRM (digital rights management) system on the Nas drive. Just remember that only the PC that originally downloaded those files will be able to play them.

Other features that might make a difference when buying a Nas drive include things such as backup software. Iomega and Buffalo both score here, as they include good backup software with their Nas drives, as does Freecom with its Storage Gateway WLAN.

The Storage Gateway is a bit pricey, costing just over £200 for a mere 160GB. However, it also includes a built-in wireless router, which means you can use it to set up a wireless network at home, or to connect the Storage Gateway to an existing wireless network.

NAS facts
If you’ve got a home network with two or more PCs attached, then it really is work thinking about buying a Nas drive.

They may be a bit more expensive than an ordinary USB hard disk, but the ability to share the drive with other users makes them incredibly convenient. And, as we all start to download more audio and video files from the internet, you’ll soon find that it’s money well spent.