Highpoint

These medium-size NAS units hold three or four HDDs. Entry-level units are great for home users and prosumers with lots of HD media and other data that needs centralising, while more advanced units come with faster processors and more advanced security and RAID features for business and surveillance users. These units are not sold with hard disks so you'll need to add your own – it's best to get matching models and capacities, especially if you plan on using RAID.

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These NAS units are the largest around, offering five HDD bays at a minimum and ten or more in many cases. They are typically geared towards advanced users who need plenty of storage space, and many are supplied in rackmount cases for use in industry and large-scale businesses. These units are not sold with hard disks so you'll need to add your own – it's best to get matching models and capacities, especially if you plan on using RAID.

If need more info to help you choose the right NAS, or you can't see the exact specification you'd like custom built NAS please click here.

Direct Attached Storage or DAS is an external storage device that is connected directly to a server or workstation without a network device in between (ie there is no hub, switch or router required) using USB, Firewire or eSATA for example. This direct connection ensures fast access to data. A DAS will work as though the hard drives are internally connected, meaning drives can be partitioned, formatted and set up like any other internal hard drive or raid array. These DAS devices are available for standalone desk or rack mounting.
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Direct-attached storage or (DAS) is storage which is directly attached to the device accessing data from it, Opposed to storage accessed over a computer network or shared Network of devices. These are common types of storage products which are external boxes/enclosures which house inside hard drives, solid-state drives (SSD), optical disc drives, the storage range from a simple Single HDD/SSD to devices which hold multiple storage devices.

The IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus interface standard for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer, frequently used by personal computers, as well as in digital audio and digital video.

Here you will find various adaptors and other miscellaneous equipment for internal hard-drives to help adapt them to your requirements.

Quickport HDD Docks allows an internal hard drive to be instantly docked and accessed without having to open your system. These units sit externally and connect via USB and/or eSATA. Check individual products for exact hard drive and PC connectivity.

A simple disk array controller may be integrated with a host bus adapter (HBA) to form a single adapter to easily fit inside a computer. These additional add-in cards allow you to add more IDE or Serial ATA drives to your system to give you more storage capacity. Some of these cards also allow the use of RAID thus increasing the performance and data security.

These cards can be installed inside desktop PCs to provide professional-level storage capabilities. They use the increased speed offered by the PCI Express bus in order to facilitate super-fast RAID configurations, and the cards in this category include between 12 and 32 ports - perfect for the most demanding of corporate setups.

The controller cards in this category provide storage speeds far in advance of the standard SATA ports inside desktop PCs and office workstations. These products are mid-range components with four connectors.

These controller cards are entry-level models that use a 1x PCI-E slot in order to provide faster SATA performance that any standard storage connector can provide. The products in this category have two connections for small-scale RAID arrays, and some work in Macs as well as PCs.

These eight-port storage controller cards offer more versatility than many of their counterparts and can be used to configure RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD arrays. They're low-profile cards that use PCI-E connections, so can be fitted to most PCs without conflicting with other hardware.

A range of cables suitable for different types of SCSI/SAS Devices

These cards offer a range of internal and external ports from slotting into the motherboard. Most of these cards use the PCI Express slot on your motherboard. Always check the specifications of the individual product to confirm the connectivity.
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