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Many people see a NAS as a mystery box with hard drives in it, wrapped in networking complexity. It’s easy to understand why many would shy away, which means having them become easier-to-use and cheaper to buy is crucial to get more on board. Luckily, Synology’s DS220j and DS420j NASes prove that there is a ton of functionality to be had in budget models.

Rule number one of data storage: back it up! This rule applies in every IT shop on earth, and it should apply to your home networks, as well. Today’s cloud offerings are vast and feature-rich, but the public cloud isn’t always the Holy Grail. When combined with on-site data storage, such as with a NAS, you greatly bolster your backup strategy.

ASUSTOR has been making NAS units for years, but it’s begun to make a name for itself the very crowded market by doing something a bit different. Under review is one of the least expensive NAS units on the market to feature 10Gbps Ethernet in a 2-bay enclosure. Let’s see how it performs.

It’s taken some time for Western Digital to hit the consumer side of the SSD market hard, but momentum is growing fast – and for good reason. The company is now producing its own in-house controller, and based on our in-depth testing of the WD Black 1TB NVMe, we’re excited to see where things are going.

Budget SSDs are not hard to find, but the price shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor. SATA SSDs might have been relegated to the bargain basement, but ultra-cheap “SATA Only” M.2 drives remain a hidden minefield that litters the budget M.2 marketplace. ADATA’s XPG S10 GAMMIX comes to the rescue, offering high-end NVMe performance at a budget price.

Storing data is easy, but storing data reliably is a fair bit harder to pull off. Sure, RAID protects against a disk failure, but is not a safe backup solution in of itself, nor does RAID offer protection against data corruption. Synology’s DS1618+ solves this by offering a combined Btrfs & RAID solution in a 6-bay NAS that can be upgraded to meet practically any home or business need.

While ADATA has a wide variety of budget SSDs on offer, it also has a growing number of more premium offerings. Under review today is one such drive, the SATA-based SU900, an MLC drive with a five-year warranty. Let’s see how it performs compared to other drives in the same budget range.

With games getting bigger and movies switching to 4K resolutions, the amount we need to store for our digital lives is forever increasing. While cloud services help, sometimes you need something local to keep everything on. We take a look at one of Seagate’s highest density drives on the market, the Barracuda Pro 12TB.

When you need ultra-fast storage on-the-go, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a drive like Samsung’s T5. It’s not the least-expensive offering out there, but it has a lot of good going for it. It’s small, looks good, has a shock-resistant design, and best of all, sports internal SSD-like speeds over USB 3.1 gen2.

You might find it hard to be impressed with a SATA based SSD in a world where PCIe SSDs exist, but despite their speed-capped interface, companies like Crucial continue to optimize, and use new tricks, to eke as much performance as possible out of those flash chips. The BX300 is a great example of where we stand today.

Remember when 1TB hard drives first hit the market? At the time, that amount of space in a single disk seemed downright exciting. Today, we see 14TB drives at the top-end, and 8TB as a common option for home server builders. That’s all good – but how does a 40TB HDD sound? We take a quick look at some history and explore the future of HDDs using microwaves and lasers.

The USA stop of Synology’s latest product tour took place last week in New York, and at the event, many new products and features were announced. Of those, some were expected, some we knew about already, and some caught us by pleasant surprise. Read on to learn about them all.

ADATA is a well-known flash storage company that offers the most prolific range of SSD models currently available on the market. While this makes it hard to determine which SSD is best for you, it also guarantees there’s a model at practically every price point. Is the midrange SU800 that offers better endurance and performance consistency worth the increase in price over budget models? We find out.

Not everyone wants a huge collection of discs for movies, and not all content is available to stream. Storing content locally is often the best bet, but HDDs fill up quickly. The solution? If you have the budget, a NAS like ASUSTOR’s AS6208T doesn’t hurt, with its 8 bays (for up to 80TB!), four Gigabit Ethernet ports, and robust app support. Let’s check it out.

Got that new laptop or desktop and want to start the new year off right with a solid-state drive upgrade? Need an SSD that will theoretically outlive every system you will ever own for the duration of your lifetime? If that’s the case then you’ve come to the right place as Transcend has the drive for you.