Nas articles

With solid state drives now fully mainstream and hard drives being more affordable than ever, there is a broad a mix of high-performance and high-capacity options to choose from in a range of form factors. Fortunately for you, we have spent dozens of hours testing storage, so we have a pretty clear idea about what devices are worth buying.

With dozens of hours testing storage devices under our belt in the last year alone, we have a pretty clear idea of what are the top devices you should buy right now, divided into six categories: Best performance SSD, best value SSD, best hard drives, best portable storage, best external storage device and best home/SMB NAS.

I've been trying to get my hands on QNAP's new quad-core, 16-bay TS-1635 ever since it was announced. Marketed as a cost-effective business NAS, it's definitely not cheap at a little over $1,000, but looking at the competition we find QNAP is well positioned where it counts.

We've tested many of QNAP's offerings over the years and one of its most recent releases, the TS-x53A, just so happens to be on-hand today in its biggest form, touting eight drive bays, a Braswell quad-core SoC, and a heap of connectivity options.

With dozens of hours testing storage devices under our belt in the last year alone, we have a pretty clear idea of what are the top devices you should buy right now, divided into five categories: Best performance SSD, best value SSD, best hard drives, best external storage device and best home/SMB NAS.

The newly released My Cloud EX2 Ultra from WD is essentially a more consumer-friendly version of the existing My Cloud EX2100. The drive can be purchased in capacities from 4TB to 12TB as well as without drives. Under its sleek curved enclosure you'll find a Marvell Armada 385 1.3 GHz dual-core SoC and 1GB of DDR3 memory, while connectivity includes a single gigabit Ethernet connector and two USB 3.0 ports.

The two-bay DiskStation DS216+ is designed to bridge the pricing gap between the DS716+ and DS216. Priced at $300 it's the cheapest Synology device to support the more modern B-tree file system (BTRFS). In this review we'll compare the performance between EXT4 and BTRFS while also checking out the new features offered by Synology's latest DSM 6.0 Beta software.

When it comes to storing data, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution. With SSDs becoming much more affordable, consumers have a broad a mix of high-performance and high-capacity options to choose from, whether in the form of internal storage, external or network attached. Here are our top picks for best performance SSD, best budget SSD, best hard drive, best external hard drive, best home/SMB NAS, and best thumb drives.

NAS servers provide a quick, easy and secure means of backing up important data. Compared to a dedicated server, a desktop NAS is considerably more compact, especially two-bay and four-bay models like the QNAP TS-453mini and Synology DS414slim on hand today. The two aren't really direct competitors, so this isn't a straight up Synology vs. QNAP battle, but rather a look at each company's approach to developing compact NAS solutions.

The DiskStation DS1515 is aimed at home users as well as small businesses. Out of the box this NAS can handle five 3.5" hard drives, giving it a maximum capacity of 40TB using the latest 8TB drives, while the addition of two DX513 expansion units boosts capacity to a whopping 120TB.

Synology and QNAP have become recognized brands in the world of network-attached storage, with products ranging from $150 to $3,000. While that cash buys a purpose-built box which installs fast, runs quiet, and sips power, the inner DIYer in us is itching to build a NAS. Silverstone's latest chassis allows just that. The DS380 is designed for more flexible, DIY NAS servers that can house up to eight hot-swappable drives and either a DTX or Mini-ITX board.

QNAP's latest two-bay NAS looks more like a set-top box than network-attached storage and that's no accident. It's becoming more common to see NAS devices replacing entire HTPCs, which makes it more practical for a design that can blend in with the kind of electronic gear you typically find around a TV.