I partly agree that HDD's have lost a lot of use cases, least in the mainstream this is 100% true, they aren't used much in prebuilt systems anymore, few gaming pre builts will sell them as the "storage" option, but unless you need your own server NAS or your a company/business then HDD's aren't great anymore. Not sure many normal folks would need a 80TB drive to start with even for a NAS, unless they're keeping 4k raw movie footage on there? Then again i'm wondering how many people use NAS with the age of digital and streaming being a massive thing now

Ricepudding:

Then again i'm wondering how many people use NAS with the age of digital and streaming being a massive thing now

Plenty of people.

Ricepudding:

Then again i'm wondering how many people use NAS with the age of digital and streaming being a massive thing now

People who want: - Share at home (eg: multimedia files) to multiple devices. - Quality (a good BD-rip is incomparable to every streaming service as it is a FLAC/ALAC with a decent audio system vs a crap itunes-like or even worse youtube-like service) - Backup (do I really need to state some samples?) - Saving bandwidth (at least if you are going to play it again, this is true especially for music) - You do not like delete things and re-download again (most common for games) - You have a lot of digitalized things, maybe from the "old analog era" (like pictures, old videos etc.. or just DVD/BD backups) - You know, there are people who work now with PCs and produce things that may occupy a lot of space. - And of course P2P. The real issue with NAS are the scam-like limitations (eg: maximum allowed disk-size) and that are overpriced for the hardware, and this is why a custom PC with all the s-ata ports you need is far better then a commercial NAS.

Alessio1989:

People who want: - Share at home (eg: multimedia files) to multiple devices. - Quality (a good BD-rip is incomparable to every streaming service as it is a FLAC/ALAC with a decent audio system vs a crap itunes-like or even worse youtube-like service) - Backup (do I really need to state some samples?) - Saving bandwidth (at least if you are going to play it again, this is true especially for music) - You do not like delete things and re-download again (most common for games) - You have a lot of digitalized things, maybe from the "old analog era" (like pictures, old videos etc.. or just DVD/BD backups) - You know, there are people who work now with PCs and produce things that may occupy a lot of space. - And of course P2P. The real issue with NAS are the scam-like limitations (eg: maximum allowed disk-size) and that are overpriced for the hardware, and this is why a custom PC with all the s-ata ports you need is far better then a commercial NAS.

Thanks for the answer, though as i mentioned a ton of people use streaming now, Heck i now use Tidal to stream music due to CD/FLAC quality. Would be interested to know how many people use it like 1/1000? 1 in a million kind of thing. outside of streaming their is also cloud servers like ondrive for photos and videos etc Not including the people who use PC to produce, as my previous thing mentioned the mainsteam, taking out for business or companies, stuff like Linus tech uses loads of servers that I understand and get, meant for the average Joe. Like you talk about Games and media, outside of BD rips I don't see why theyd have a NAS. having a 3TB HDD in their system would make more sense than a NAS for that. From what i see with mainsteam people here so for the average Joe getting a HDD is making less sense day in day out, due to SSDs being faster and cheaper all the time and not everyone needing in this case 80TB HDD for their system. A few of your points i get, but seems small case, or business reasons, or get in BD rip case pirate reasons. The not having to download again i can see as a bigger thing in some countries where you have bandwidth limits mind you Didn't know about the limitations, or you referring to the Nas boxs that get sold as a few TB's for crazy money?

For limitation I am talking about "cheap" NAS boxes: few slots with insane size limitations... Or anything that doesn't cost like a kidney. Another reason to use such big HDD is emulation: they are ideal for backup copies of console games (GC/Wii/WiiU/PS1/PS2 and recently also PS3 games are becoming playable... XB/XB360 still require a couple of years of works..) As for FLAC/ALAC: it is easier and faster to obtain them from good sources then searching for a good mp3/mp4/aac/ogg such that was compressed in the right way nor re-compressed.