Question Can't decide between NAS and DAS. Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech. I looked into a HW raid setup though to play with and the only real difference is using the card to do raid makes it OS agnostic and in some cases offers better One of the biggest difference between desktop and rackmount Storage devices, NAS, DAS or SAN is the rear fans. Desktop units have to be more economical with space (given that often more than 50% of the space is given to the storage media itself (HDD or SSD). This alongside the issues of cooling and power consumption results in Desktop Units A NAS server is an external hard drive that connects to a network instead of a computer. A NAS server generally connects directly to a router, or a switch, using a network cable. It's similar to a In today's Ask the Admin, I'll explain the differences between four types of disk storage: Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD), Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Differences between SAN and NAS At a basic level, SAN is more like DAS than NAS , because it uses block storage. NAS works as a remote system, where file requests are redirected over a network to a NAS device. The Desktop and NAS drives use a standard VCM build while the Enterprise NAS drives use a much larger magnet as illustrated below. The Desktop drive is on the left, the Enterprise drive on the right. Notice also the more beefy VCM plates in the enterprise drive, along with the larger arm damper plates that carry the heads. The major differences between NAS and SAN are as follows −. NAS. SAN. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. SAN stands for Storage Area Network. It can connect directly to an Ethernet network. It can use several protocols to connect with servers, including NFS, SMB/CIFS, and It can use SCSI protocol to communicate with servers. Direct-attached storage (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS) are two common types of data storage used by organizations and individuals. Both offer unique benefits, but one key difference is transfer speed. In general, DAS provides faster data transfer rates while NAS offers more flexibility and accessibility. Additionally, the two units also had different processor architectures, which might also affect perceived audible differences. Having established early on that these two NAS units did indeed sound quite different, we went on to isolate differences between the individual drives, this time mounting all types concurrently in the same NAS chassis. This storage device is then plugged into the network and it can be accessed by any type of client regardless of the host operating system. Whereas SAN only sees LUNS, NAS is able to drill down and see specific file names. NAS and SAN can be combined to offer hybrid storage options to datacenter administrators. 6vxexUR.