If there is one thing that's a sure fact then that has to be that over the years our demand in data usage has risen a lot. We moved from installing games from a CD towards a DVD, our media content is changing from standard definition to high definition. With windows 95 an operating install was only a few hundred MBs in size, these days if you have Vista, that same install is 3 to 4 GB in size.

Next to that we all have more computers in the house. Typically a game PC, downstairs a work PC, and I know a lot of you also have a HTPC. Within that context one generic consensus is that we have a much larger demand and requirements for storage.

Now to leave a power hungry PC on to share your files over your internal LAN is a rather expensive thing to do, especially when you have it activated 24/7. A good alternative and solution for sharing data is a NAS unit. Network Attached Storage. Simply put, you add a small device (server) in your network responsible for storage and serving data you need to access from any of the PCs mentioned above.

NAS units never have been really popular due to the excessive prices. They have typically been injected in the market as enterprise class storage units in a  company segment of the market, where margins are huge. That is changing and we see a strong shift for NAS units from Offices towards the home. And where there's high volume, there's competition. That means more features and often lower prices. So this development definitely is a good thing.

The NAS units are often small, do not use a lot of power, are highly configurable, offer redundancy as some models even can handle RAID internally.  Patriot just entered the NAS market with a simple affordable NAS unit called Corza. Their product supports two HDD's setups, RAID 0/1, USER and USERGROUP based access, FTP server, Hot swappable drives, really the most essential features a NAS unit should handle.

This model comes with two hot swappable bays, pop in 2x 2TB drives .. and you just added 4 TB of data storage over a 1000 Mbit/s network connection. Downright handy. Especially when you consider this little NAS unit consumes roughly only 25 Watt with two drives installed.

Let's head on over to the next page where we'll introduce the product to you. But first have a peek.