Walking around the CEDIA show in Atlanta last week was quite an experience. If you read the blog on video surveillance solutions I wrote you’ll already have an idea of what this show was all about. (Oh alright, here's a link.) The overwhelming feeling I left with was, “Wow. Sensory overload reached.” It was loud, big, colorful, crowded, and loud. Did I mention loud?

In excess of 20,000 people descended on the World Congress Center to get up to speed on industry trends in automation and media distribution. Needless to say I came away with a distinct impression of where this whole thing is headed. Most booths I encountered in the main hall had at least some manner of integration to mobile devices (iPhone integration was particularly popular) and a significant tilt toward distribution of media. (Including an impressive booth from Microsoft showing off the features of Windows Media Center)

This would be the point where my gears started turning. If you’ve lived your life outside of a cave, out from beneath a rock, or on the planet earth for the last 10 years, chances are you’ve seen an iPod. Apple has sold over 20 million iPhones alone since their release. I asked my girlfriend, who is surgically attached to her iPod, and she said she’s spent HUNDREDS of dollars in the Apple store on iTunes. Hundreds. Thousands of pennies. Ignoring the realization that she’s blowing my money on music I can’t stand (and in the interest of your education), I let it go and kept up the interview. (You can thank me later.) Using only the iPhone numbers (which aren’t even a drop in the proverbial bucket), if the average person spent just 20 bucks in music from iTunes, that’s 400 million dollars in songs floating around out there. Think about this for a second…how many songs do you have on your MP3 player? On your computer?

Now we’re just talking about music. What happens if we include movies, photographs, and documents? Tax records? The value of our data is in many ways incalculable. Whether the value to you is primarily financial or sentimental, this data is more often than not left unprotected. There are literally dozens of ways that consumers and businesses back up their data, from CD’s to external hard drives to tape drives…take your pick!

Network Attached Storage is the only choice that not only provides a means of backing up your data to a secure location, but it also provides a means of sharing it within your home or business easily.
NAS devices secure your data through a technology called RAID. (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) RAID allows you to mirror (replicate) your data, stripe your data across multiple disks, and more. Once your data is secure, a NAS also shares your data across your workgroup to allow your whole family or office access to the resource.

D-Link manufactures several NAS devices, but today I’m going to focus on two in particular, the DNS-323 and the DNS-343. Each device ships with no hard drives, allowing you to determine how much storage you need, or what your budget can afford. The DNS-323 supports up to two SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives up to 1.5TB in size, and the DNS-343 supports up to four drives. For those of you playing along at home, that’s a load of storage space.

There are a couple of really cool features of these boxes worth mentioning:
1) Built In Web Management: Both boxes are easily managed through the web interface, easy to set up, and easy to use.
2) Built in FTP Server: File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is an easy way to offer files remotely for your use when on the road or inside your network.
3) Built in iTunes Server: Users loading iTunes on their computers can see the DNS-323 or DNS-343 from within iTunes, and can add any music or movies to their library! No setup required!
4) Built in UPnP Server: Universal Plug & Play is an up and coming protocol for sharing music, photos, and movies across your network. UPnP advertises the device’s presence and compatible players can discover and play media from this device with ease.

The value of a network based storage solution is pretty easy to see, isn't it? Just using something so simple as MP3's the dollars and cents quickly add up. When you think about your most important data, the need to protect it, and the need to share and collaborate, a NAS solution makes perfect sense.

How are you protecting your data?

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