What to Choose for Backup – External Hard Drive or NAS?

Ram Infotech Data Recovery March 20, 2024

             What to Choose for Backup – External Hard Drive or NAS? 

Summary: Choosing a NAS or external hard drive for Backup depends on several factors, such as technical expertise, ease of access, connectivity, storage capacity, and more. This guide shows a detailed comparison between NAS & an external hard drive to help you make a wise decision.  

Data loss may occur due to drive errors, file corruption, or software or hardware issues. However, you can prevent it regularly backing up your system data. Several popular ways to back up data include cloud backup, server backup, external drives, etc.

External hard drives have been the primary method of storing backups for a long time as they are small, portable, and easy to use. You just have to connect an external hard drive to your computer and copy-paste or transfer your files, images, movies, etc.

However, we recently encountered several scenarios where users are adopting NAS for backup purposes. The technical advancements and the expanding need for data storage, availability, and accessibility have driven people to set up NAS devices.

So, which one is better- Good old external drives or NAS configuration to protect your data? Deciding on one could be easier if you know all the prerequisites. Here’s an overview of external hard drives and NAS devices covering the pros & cons. Additionally, we’ve included a comparison table showing NAS vs. HDD to help you make the best choice!

Difference Between External Hard Drive and NAS

An external hard drive is usually a removable drive you can attach to a computer, whereas NAS is a complete setup that can connect and access multiple computers. Let’s get more insights by discussing them separately.

External hard drives are typically removable hard drives that you can connect to your system through a USB cable or wireless. They are small, portable, and easy to carry, so you can move them around and take your data anywhere. These drives are used to store data when the system’s internal drive is at its total capacity. Additionally, you can use an external hard drive to back up essential files and other data and transfer or copy-paste them anytime. You can also use them as network drives to store shared data. The standard external hard drives include HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) and SSDs (Solid State Drives). WD (Western Digital), Samsung, Toshiba, Seagate, and SanDisk are some of the most popular external hard drive brands.

Network-attached Storage (NAS) is a file-level storage device that stores and shares data for many connected computers. It provides excellent server uptime and keeps data available to users. NAS also supports data archiving and Backup. Users can easily collaborate and respond to other users’ requests or actions for storing and accessing data. It can include two or more hard drives for enhanced storage capacity.

Many of the latest NASs include RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) to offer storage, redundancy, performance, or both. NAS has become more reliable when it comes to data security and provides higher storage with RAID inclusion. When discussing NAS, two brands come to mind: Synology and QNAP. However, other popular brands like Netgear, Seagate, Western Digital, and Buffalo are also available.

Network Attached Storage vs. External Hard Drive – Benefits and Drawbacks

Both devices offer various advantages and drawbacks. Here, we’ve listed both below.

External Hard Drive – Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • External hard drives are portable and easy to use. They are available in different sizes and have various storage capacities.
  • They can be connected to multiple devices with USB cables or FireWire.
  • They are available with upgrades and different models, so there are no compatibility issues with various operating systems.
  • They are mainly used for storage, backup, and file-sharing purposes.

Cons:

 

 

 

 

 


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