EMC's Iomega subsidiary today unveiled a new series of desktop and rack-mountable storage arrays that use high capacity SATA or high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs).

My lab is dotted with Synology NAS devices providing a wide array of services, from disk-based backup to general file sharing to shared storage for small virtualization build-outs. In all the years I've had these boxes spinning, they've never once let me down. In fact, I have a four-year-old Synology DS409 that is still performing perfectly. It hasn't lost a disk yet.

Storage vendor, Iomega, is switching the company focus from consumers to the SMB market by launching its new ioclub Premier Partner Program.

The six-bay Iomega StorCenter px6-300d is the largest array you can get from Iomega before you venture into rack-mount servers, and it's just the kind of box you'd expect to see in a remote office or small to medium-sized business. Considering Iomega's parent EMC is a leader in the enterprise storage market, I had high expectations for this solution.

The QNAP Turbo NAS became my favorite during the testing. What this unit lacks in special cloud features (see the Iomega and Netgear reviews), it makes up in performance and solid functionality. My feeling is that the QNAP would be best suited to a company that has a little more tech knowledge on hand, so the staff could take advantage of all that this box can do. The hardware is solid, and setup and administration are well documented and easy to manage, but with all of the functionality that this box offers, I'm not sure I'd give it to a nontechnical business user.

In an attempt to spur adoption of its MozyProcloud backup service, Mozy today shipped external hard drives to many of its small- to medium-sized business customers to speed initial system backups.

Network-attached storage boxes are commonly sold already preconfigured with drives, but many companies offer the option for you to build your NAS up yourself. These storage manufacturers sell their NAS devices bare, so you can populate them with the capacity and types of hard drives you prefer.

Creating your own cloud storage system doesn’t require a degree in computer science. But it does help to choose the right equipment. A number of companies are offering network-capable hard drives that work nicely for photo backup and remote access. These network appliances typically house a couple of drives, basic server software, and an Ethernet connector. And since you don’t have to wire these units directly to a computer, they can be housed anywhere you have power and a connection to the Internet.

If you thought USB drives were only for attaching to desktop or laptop computers, think again. Various manufacturers provide ways to connect such drives to your network, so you can retrieve files stored on them from across your network, or even via the Internet.