"The market for external storage has really started to heat up over
the last couple of years. As greater capacities are becoming commonplace, people are finding even more stuff to store. As I have written in the past, the
more space a person has, the more they will find to store in it, in the real world as well as the digital one. Some people can buy that 500 GB, 750 or 1 TB drive and slap it in their computer, but others want more complicated solutions. And the more you have to store, the more you have to lose. It is this increased awareness of data protection as well as storage needs which have given the NAS (network attached storage) market a boost. Light years ahead of the external hard drive, network attached storage brings with it a huge feature set, from remote accessibility, to automatic backups, and hardware failsafe systems. What is even more amazing is that these feats don't require a second mortgage. Today's NAS contender is the Cube Station CS407 NAS, from a newer company (founded in 2000) called Synology."