I am a Senior Author at XDA with a decade of experience covering consumer tech. I care more about the impact of technology on people’s everyday lives than the superfluous features companies keep ...

External hard drives help add extra storage, but they don't do much else. Network attached storage can play media, run apps, ...

It's uglier, cheaper, and better than any NAS appliance I could've bought.

A NAS doesn't need identical drives to run well.