There are times when we need more storage than we have available on the drives on the computer. Usually, the answer to this question is to install a Network Attached Storage device. These are also known as NAS devices. They are devices that connect to the network and provide additional storage. Unfortunately, even with the best discount online shopping deals, can be expensive. Here are a couple of other options to expand storage:
External hard drive
This is the simplest approach and involves connecting a USB drive to the computer. The limitation here is that you can only get as much storage as the largest drive available on the market today. There is also no redundancy, so if something happens to the drive, all the data is lost. The issue then is that it needs to be backed up in order to cover the potential failure of this drive.
USB Drive Dock
This is similar to the above option except has provisions for connecting more than one drive. They also happen to be quite affordable, especially with online shopping deals. They come in two, four and six drive versions. Throw in the ability to use the RAID protocol and you get protection for your data, although that comes at the cost of about one drive’s worth of storage. With modern 6TB drives, these units can provide as much as 24TB of additional storage.
There are also online services which will backup and delete the data on your drive as you go along but unfortunately requires a lot of bandwidth and is not suitable for files that require immediate access.