Of course, there’s no guarantee that your own needs match Om’s precisely. While the idea of just adding an external box with storage is attractive, you need to think carefully about what you’re going to do with it. Is it just an extra drive that you can get to from all of your computers? Is it a media server? Is it a backup device? Do you need compatibility with multiple operating systems? Do you need web or wireless access?

In addition to the sheer amount of storage (1 terabyte is getting more and more common these days), you need to understand something about the underlying technology. If a storage unit promises RAID 0, that means the failure of 1 drive will cause data loss. RAID 1 gives you complete redundancy, but it cuts the effective storage size in half. RAID 5 gives you redundancy while losing less effective storage, but it can take much longer to recover from a bad drive.

Besides the Buffalo unit, your other choices include Apple’s Time Capsule, Drobo’s products, and many more. Or, of course, you can just load up a spare computer with extra drives. If you’ve added network storage to your own home network, what did you use and how happy are you with the results?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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