Hanover  - Users of home networks may want to consider a networked hard drive to provide communal access to music, photos, videos and data. Also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), these compact devices work quietly, are simple to set up, and use only 10 watts on average, reports the Hanover-based c't magazine.

By comparison, a PC left running around the clock uses at least 60 watts, even if only rarely used to call up data.

As NAS hard drives generally offer incredibly large amounts of storage space, they are well equipped to serve as a backup space for a PC or laptop's hard drive. Almost all operating systems can now handle daily backups of this type.

One frequent complaint about NAS hard drives is the data transfer speeds, the magazine says. Even if the hard drive possesses a gigabit Ethernet connection, the built-in processors are often not powerful enough to achieve the maximum theoretical transfer rates. The devices frequently top out at 20 Megabytes per second (MByte/s), and in other cases even 10 MByte/s or less, the magazine scolds. (dpa)