While popular among storage-hungry PC enthusiasts, network-attached storage has proven to be particularly useful in office environments, where sharing large amounts of data between several desktop PCs can become quite problematic. With the availability of 2TB hard drives, a majority of users will be satisfied with a 2 or 4-bay NAS solution. However, as data accumulates over time there are those who might require even more than that.

Performance and feature set are two things you'll definitely want to keep in mind. From our experience in testing a range of devices we can assure you there can be huge differences from one offering to another. Some will provide you with transfer speeds of around 10-20MB/s, while other more serious models will deliver considerably better performance, but most still struggle to max out a Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Our quest for bigger and better alternatives led us to one place: the QNAP TS-809 Pro Turbo NAS. Not only can this product accommodate more hard drives than we've seen before, supporting a total of eight, but it possesses power that is unmatched by any NAS device we have come across to date.