Considerations when choosing an NAS

Size

Are you just running a small home business or are you running a whole enterprise?

Security

1. Are you dealing with sensitive data?
2. Do you (or your associates/customers) access your data remotely?
3. If you answer yes to BOTH, then you need:
4. Secure protocols like HTTPS/SFTP/SSH (or any form of encrypted access method).
5. Do NOT use plain FTP, or HTTP with basic authentication (these allow your passwords to be intercepted).
   

Speed

You can never get fast enough.

1. USB 2.0 high speed (480Mbps) is a MUST.
2. Gigabit Ethernet is preferred. (Fast ethernet is too slow)
3. Serial-ATA (SATA) support is preferred.
   

Space

1. If you have lots of data, but they are not very important, then you need a lot of space.
1. Example: large photos and videos that you want to share for a short period of time, and you have the originals somewhere else.
   

Reliability

1. If you have critical data that you cannot afford to lose then you need reliability. You need to dedicate some portion of the space for redundant storage (i.e. backups).