From the mid-1990s, NAS devices began gaining popularity as a convenient method of sharing files among multiple computers, as well as to remove the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network by doing so, a NAS can provide faster data access, easier administration, and simpler configuration as opposed to using general-purpose server to serve files. Network-attached storage typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as NFS, SMB, or AFP. NAS systems are networked appliances that contain one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID.

It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer.

The term 'NAS' can refer to both the technology and systems involved, or a specialized device built for such functionality (as unlike tangentially related technologies such as local area networks, a NAS device is often a singular unit).Ī NAS device is optimised for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. Network-attached storage ( NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients.

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