backups / storage
Why a home NAS beats cloud storage for backups. Ownership, speed and one-time cost: the case for keeping your backups at home.
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By Sara Amini
Network engineer
1 min read
Cloud storage is convenient, but a home NAS gives you full ownership of your data, LAN-speed restores, and no monthly fees.
Restores are the real test
Backing up is easy to arrange and easy to leave untested. Pulling a hundred gigabytes back over a home connection can take a weekend; pulling it off a drive in the next room takes minutes.
What it costs
Two drives and an enclosure cost roughly what three years of a family cloud plan does, and the hardware keeps working after that.
Where the cloud still wins
It is off-site by definition. A copy at a relative’s house covers the same risk for the price of a second small drive.