It's a given that sometime during the useful life of pretty much any PC or Notebook, you are going to get tight on hard disk space. It doesn't really matter how much capacity that you start out with, eventually you'll need more than you have.
Option #1 – upgrade to a larger hard drive
There are several solutions to this problem. If you are moderately handy, and have the time and desire, you can upgrade to a larger hard drive. Hard disk drives for desktops now top one terabyte (1,000 gigabytes), while Notebook hard disk drives are up to 320GB. You'll eventually fill these up as well, but it might take a while. The downside is that transferring applications onto your new drive is usually not a particularly easy process.
Option #2 – add storage via a USB connection
Adding additional storage via a USB connection is a lot easier than adding an internal drive. Simply plug it in and go. But a USB hard disk drive requires that the PC/Notebook it is attached to be powered on. And sharing the data and applications on an attached drive over a network is often very slow.
Option #3 – opt for Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Network Attached Storage might be the best answer. A NAS drive is a separate unit with its own hard drive(s), power supply, and Ethernet port. When plugged into a network, the drive can be accessed by any PC that is attached to the network, or access can be restricted to specific users, or even restrict specific users to specific applications and/or data.
What makes NAS an attractive expansion alternative? Here are five good reasons.
1.
It's truly plug-and-play. You can have the NAS drive up and running on your network in minutes. Simply take the drive out of the box, plug it in to an AC outlet and a network switch, and run an included utility on the PCs that you want to be able to access the drive.
2.
Unlike a hard drive upgrade, a NAS drive is easily sharable with other PCs and notebooks on the network. This provides the equivalent of a hard disk upgrade to multiple systems, instead of only a single PC or notebook.
3.
A shared NAS drive is more economical than multiple hard disk upgrades.
4.
You can encrypt a NAS drive, providing secure data storage for the network from any location that you can tie in from remotely, without having encrypted files on your PC or notebooks. This provides data security without raising TSA security eyebrows at border crossings.
5.
Many NAS drives have space for multiple hard drives. So expanding network hard drive capacity is as simple as opening the NAS box and adding another drive, or, if the case already has two drives in it, replacing one of them. While you have to power down the NAS drive to accomplish this, none of the PCs or notebooks attached to the network have to be turned off. Expansion is easy and affordable.
There's no practical limit on how many NAS drives you can attach to your network, or where these drives need to be physically positioned. If your network stretches over several physical locations, dispersed NAS drives make a great backup solution.
Rick Telberg CEO of Bay Street Group Research, is the most widely-followed analyst and commentator for the finance and accounting profession. He has helped launch and develop a host of leading products and services for accountants and financial advisors, including Accounting Today, Accounting Technology and Practical Accountant magazines, WebCPA.com, and e-commerce portals SmartPros and CPA2Biz. He serves as Editor At Large for the AICPA Insider family of e-newsletters and blogs at www.cpatrendlines.com.
Any views or comments expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and not necessarily those of any other organization. No person quoted or cited has any known connection to or interest in Hewlett Packard, and their appearance here should not be construed as an endorsement.
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