I had one of those dreaded experiences of data loss recently. I was backing up data off of a HDD that was starting to fail over to an external drive and happened to catch my foot in the cord of the HDD dock I was using. Needless to say, the drive went flying and hit the ground, causing it to fail instantly. I am sure recovery would be possible since it was the HDD motor that jammed and failed, however, the average person can't afford thousands of dollars to have their data recovered by one of the companies that specializes in it.

The worst part about it was the drive has been sitting on my desk for several months, so I don’t even remember everything that was on it. I have a backup of some of the information, but there is no way to tell what data was lost. For months, I have been looking into a centralized, safe location to store my data. A NAS device is that perfect solution for me so that I can backup data from all of my devices, as well as access some of that data, such as family pictures, on the fly.