Why Network-Attached Storage Are Ideal for College Students

A college student has dozens and dozens of files. Assignments, research papers, class notes, photos, videos, the list goes on. It is difficult to keep all these files easily accessible and organised when all laptops come with limited storage and many cloud storage services have limited data storage. Network-Attached Storage (NAS) is a great way to preserve files while making them easily accessible, shareable, and secure.

In this post, we are going to discuss why NAS is good for college students, considering its practicality, ease of use, and unbelievable characteristics. For students who find themselves buried in assignments, using NAS can streamline file management and data backup. Additionally, services like Academized are available to “write my college paper” if time gets tight. Academized is a professional writing service that helps students with their academic papers, ensuring quality work even when deadlines are looming.

1. Centralised Storage for All Devices

One of the best things about NAS is its centralised storage: college students often use more than one device, such as a laptop, smartphone and/or tablet. With NAS, all your data can reside in one central place which is accessible from any of your devices, so you don’t have to remember where you saved a file or whether you can access it if you are on campus or somewhere else.

Unlike an external hard drive or USB flash drive, which would have to be physically plugged in and could be easily lost, NAS means you can access your files from anywhere with an internet connection. For students who are working away from home, this could be a good solution.

2. Automatic Backup and Data Protection

If your college student ever has an essay or a research paper lost or destroyed on his or her computer, you will know how important NAS automatic backup features are, just in case an accident happens someday – a device breaks, or a file gets accidentally deleted.

The beauty of most NAS systems is that you can set up a schedule so that you don’t have to copy files individually every day. This is something that students don’t have time to do, but still can get a handle on by having their computer backups running in the background. This hands-off solution is just as convenient as hiring online nursing paper writers when you need help with your workload but don’t want to manage every detail yourself.

3. More Storage for Less Money

One option is to buy additional disk space, but cloud storage providers such as Google Drive or Dropbox put limits on the amount of free space you can use, and their premium cloud storage plans can get pretty pricey, especially if your catalogue consists of large files like videos, or if you have lots of large files such as high-resolution images.

NAS is the more affordable option in the long run. With an inexpensive one-off purchase for a basic NAS that comes equipped with cheap and reliable hard drives, one can have multiple terabytes of storage to their name. One study estimates that, on average, a NAS setup that offers 2TB of storage costs about $200 up front; by contrast, a 2TB Google Drive subscription can cost more than $100 a year. Over four years of college, that’s a savings of hundreds of dollars.

NAS also gives you control over how much storage you really need. If you run out of space, just bolt an extra hard drive on to your existing NAS appliance to grow your storage, without incurring a recurring fee.

4. Offline Access and Better Control Over Your Data

But without the internet, cloud services are usually inaccessible. If you have spotty Wi-Fi or no data service, NAS can let you get to your files even without the internet. Are you a student who studies in areas with poor internet? Then, you’ll want to have your files available offline.

Here’s a comparison between NAS and cloud storage for college students:

5. Sharing and Collaboration Made Easy

Sure, you can use NAS as a hub for storing personal documents, but college students might also work on group capstone projects or share course materials with their classmates. Sharing files with NAS is as easy as sending a link. You can set up shared folders that others can access and collaborate on without using third-party services.

Some NAS systems even let you specify permissions – including read-only access for a given user and full editing rights for another. That way, you can restrict who sees and edits your files, which is good if you’re working in groups or on research partnerships.

6. Media Storage and Streaming

Beyond homework, NAS can be used to manage and stream media files. It doesn’t matter whether you have dozens of photos, movies or music; NAS can store them all, allowing you to reclaim space on your personal gadgets. Some NAS systems offer built-in media servers that are compatible with a variety of devices to stream content to them.

Or share a video project with your classmates over the wireless network without worrying about the file size limits. You could also enable access remotely or via mobile device to your entire music collection on the NAS, and stream music while walking to class. Consequently, NAS services might prove useful and convenient for academic purposes.

7. Long-Term Investment

While NAS might look like a bigger upfront investment than either external drives or cloud storage subscriptions, when viewed as a long-term proposition, the long-term cost per gigabyte is far lower with NAS, and the ability to scale up with more disks means that you won’t be constantly upgrading to larger, more expensive ‘cloud’ plans either.

NAS is highly robust and extremely reliable as well. Your data is under your own control; you aren’t dependent on third-party service providers who might disappear with your files or update their service in a way that you don’t like. Once set up, a NAS system can be used for years to come.

Conclusion

For students, who need to store assignments, projects and the vast amount of media they access, NAS will save them money and time as it works effectively and economically. To pull all of the above together, the built-in features of NAS offer easy centralised access, auto backups, offline mode, and sharing.

Yes, there is an initial outlay when setting up the NAS, but over its lifetime – more storage, better management of the data, the ability to share it – makes the modest cost of a NAS a clear choice for a continuing student. NAS would be a useful tool helping students to manage their academic and other files in an efficient manner throughout their course at college and beyond.