The consumer market for large capacity storage devices is booming with the growing number of multiple PC homes with numerous music, photo, and video files. The majority of these devices is focused strictly on low cost. However, many offer high reliability and high capacity with real business value. For a small enterprise that needs storage capacities from 500MB to a few terabytes, home storage devices provide a cost-effective solution.
In addition to lower prices than enterprise-class systems, the consumer products tend to offer very simple setup and operation. In determining whether or not a consumer device is right for the small enterprise, a clear set of business requirements must be satisfied:
- Redundancy and Fault Isolation
- Connectivity Options
- Storage Capacity
- Security
- Remote Access
Not all of these requirements will be critical for every enterprise. However, by reviewing the capabilities of the devices against this checklist, the small enterprise may find an excellent mass storage device at a very attractive price.