External hard drives and Network-Attached Storages (NAS) are some of the best ways to expands your computer’s storage whenever is running low or filled up. And while external hard drives are small, mobile and pretty easy to use (simply plug-in and use) as a newbie or beginner, network-attached storages are also not as technical-oriented as they uses to be and are now relatively easy to set up and get started with.
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But what’s best for you, though? You have a computer that is running low on storage space and you’re considering purchasing an external hard drive or shelling out cash for some of the best NAS for home use. You are stuck. You’ve heard about external hard drives and NAS device but you aren’t exactly sure which one fits perfectly in line with your storage needs. Also, you don’t want to make bad investment(s) — no one does. At the end of this piece, you should have information that will help you make the best decision.
NAS vs. External Drive
Number of computers
If you own just a single computer, you are better off with an external hard drive. However, if you own two or more computers, you should get a network-assisted storage. This is because a NAS will connect to your (home or office) network and all computers connected to your routers will have simultaneous access to data on the device. This can’t be said for external hard drives though — which access to files is limited to the number of connection ports on the hard drive or on your computer.
Convenience
This is somewhat a relative to the first point above. Using an external hard drive on another computer will require you to shuffle the drive(s) from computer-to-computer to access files. A network-assisted storage on the other hand only requires you to connect to your network to have access files.
In addition, NAS also frees up ports on your computer.
Size and Mobility
Generally, external hard drives are small, compact and built to be easily conveyed around — in your backpack or maybe your pocket. Also, they do not necessarily require internet connectivity or power supply to function. NAS, on that other hand, usually come in the form of boxes meant to be placed in a permanent position, plugged into a power source and router.
You should know that there are also big-sized high-capacity external hard drives that require a power source (from a wall socket) in addition to being plugged in to a computers USB port. For easy access to your files, you should purchase an external hard drive if you are mostly on the move, or have no/poor internet and power supply.
Expandability
External hard drives are mostly always come with fixed storage capacities that cannot be expanded. Should you need more storage in the future, you’d have to purchase a new hard drive. NAS comes in different models based on what is called “Bays”. Bays are extra space that allow users attach extra hard drives to the network in the case of storage space shortage. NAS can have as many as two, three, four, and up to 8 bays.
To add, some NAS devices come with one or more USB ports which even allows you plug-in an external hard drive. You can even plug-in and configure a printer to the port and it will show up on the network.
Flexibility
While external hard drives can hold you files, media, and other documents just as well as a network-assisted storage will, NAS is more flexible and does a whole lot more. In fact, NAS is sometimes referred to as a hard drive with a brain.
NAS are more or less a computer. They come with fully functional operating system, RAM (which is also expandable) as well as support for first and third-party applications that extend the functionality of your NAS device(s) beyond storage.
Hard drives have traditionally been pretty dumb devices—for the most part, they neither know nor care about the machine they are attached to.
Some manufacturers offer Backup and recovery services, email and communication, surveillance, as well as some office apps like Spreadsheet, Documents, and Slides with their NAS devices.
Accessibility
As you already know by now, you’d need to be in physical contact with an external hard drive to have access to files, media or other documents on it. It must be plugged in to a compatible port on your computer. With NAS, you can remotely access files on the device from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an account setup. This Cloud service is a feature you’d find on majority of NAS devices.
Interestingly, you can also grant third-party individuals access to files on your network. They do not need to have any software, just a device with internet connection.
Set up an account and you’ll be able to log in from any Internet connection and access your files just as if you were sitting at your desk at home. It’s like a personal, more secure version of the cloud.
NAS vs External Hard drive: Verdict
An external hard drive — considering the features, price, and ease of use — would be the ideal option to pick from the duo if all you have —and need extra storage for— is a single computer.
It also comes in handy when all you need additional storage for is to carry large sets of data all the time.
Also See: See How to Buy an External USB Hard Drive
A NAS device, on the other hand, is more expensive (to purchase and maintain) and is best for a setup of multiple users/computers who need extra storage and to share files among each other. NAS is ideal for small businesses and homes with multiple computers and maybe a surveillance system, gaming system, and a huge collection of media that would be streamed across multiple devices.
5+ Effective Fixes for Hard Drive Showing Wrong Capacity
It's very common to be faced with similar disk problems such as SD card reporting the wrong size, USB drives getting incorrect size. If you are one of the victims of the hard drive showing the wrong capacity, you can deal with them with these effective solutions. Just read on, the content below will clear all your doubts.
Hard Drive Showing Wrong Free Space Problem
What demonstrated below is a real story of a user telling his 1TB hard drive showing only 0.18TB of free space.
'My WD external hard drive gets a strange problem. It's 1TB advertised, and I only use it as a backup hard drive. But today, I surprisingly find that the free space is only 0.18TB. That's impossible because the used space can't be more than 200GB. What happened? Why is the hard drive showing the wrong free space? Can I restore the full size? And how?'
A newly bought 500 GB HDD might display only 465 GB even with no data on it. Some external hard disks and USB flash drives may show another incorrect capacity issue that the free space size hugely decreases. Is your hard drive corrupted when it shows the wrong capacity? Not really. There are quite a few reasons that lead to a hard drive showing less space than it should.
Why Hard Drive Not Showing Full Capacity![]()
Excluding that you have bought a fake hard drive from an unscrupulous merchant, there are several reasons Windows could display the wrong amount of available space. Like hidden files, formatting overhead, virus attack, recovery partitions occupancy, a hard drive issue, etc. In addition to what just mentioned, we list other common causes to help you understand why your (external) hard drive is showing the wrong capacity or free space.
As you can tell, not all the events require fixes. Many hard drives are with an OEM partition or recovery partition for factory restore purpose, and it's usually invisible in My Computer. So, when you find a new hard drive showing less disk space than it advertised, go to 'My Computer' (in Windows 7 and 8) or 'This PC' (in Windows 8.1 and 10) > 'Manage' > 'Disk Management' and check the real space taking by the recovery partition.
For other simple causes, you can troubleshoot quickly. For instance, show hidden files and perform anti-virus to check whether the hard drive shows full capacity or not. If the problem is not solved, continue applying the corresponding solutions below. I hope they can help you.
Solution 1. Update Hard Drive Driver
Step 1. Click 'Start', type Device Manager, and press 'Enter'.
Step 2. Click and expand 'Disk drives'. Right-click on the hard drive shows the wrong capacity and select 'Update driver'.
Step 3. Select 'Search automatically for updated driver software'. If this fails, you can manually search for and install the updated driver software on the official website.
If the hard drive driver is the latest one, but things still go wrong, you can try to uninstall and reinstall the driver.
Solution 2. Reformat the External or Internal Hard Drive
The following two methods teach you how to format the hard drive with the command prompt and a partition management tool. The former requires particular computer technology. So if you are not familiar with CMD, to ensure safety, you'd better use the easy-to-use formatting tool in Method 2 to do it.
Method 1. Format Hard Drive via Command Prompt
Step 1. Click 'Start', type cmd in the search box. Right-click on the Command Prompt and choose 'Run as administrator'.
Step 2. Type diskpart and press 'Enter'. Then, input and execute the following commands in order.
Step 3. Type list disk and press 'Enter'. All the disk drives will be listed, including your external drives that connected to the computer.
Step 4. Check the number of the hard drive showing the wrong capacity. Type select disk + disk number, and press enter. For example, select disk 1. You're telling diskpart to format disk 1.
Step 5. Go on to type clean. This step starts to clean up all files and folders on the selected hard disk.
Step 6. Type create partition primary and press 'Enter'.
Step 7. Type format fs=ntfs (or format fs=exfat) and press 'Enter'. You're telling diskpart to format the drive with a file system, let it be NTFS, exFAT, etc.
Step 8. Type assign to set a drive letter to the newly created partition.
That's a complete guide of formatting hard disk via diskpart format commands. Is this method complicated for you? If so, format your hard drive with the following easier way. Watch the video tutorial and see how to make it.
Method 2. Format Hard Drive with an Easy Formatting Tool
If you are not familiar with Command Prompt, you can turn to a professional and easy-to-use hard drive formatting tool. My recommendation is EaseUS Partition Master. Download it and format your HDD, SSD, SD card or USB drive easily.
Solution 3. Convert Hard Drive from MBR to GPT
If the (external) hard drive shows less space than it should because of MBR style, you can fix this problem by converting MBR to GPT and then extend the partition though adding the unallocated space.
The following video shows you to convert MBR to GPT with Windows Disk Management and EaseUS Partition Master. The Disk Management demands you to delete all existing partitions first. If you persist in this way, remember to back up your hard drive at the beginning. Or you can download the partition manager to convert disk between GPT and MBR directly and keep partitions as well as data intact.
After you have succeeded in converting MBR to GPT, continue to expand your disk as follows.
Step 1. Locate the Target Partition
To start extending partition, you should first launch EaseUS Partition Master and locate the target partition which you would like to extend.
Step 2. Extend the Target Partition
1. Right-click on the target partition which you would like to extend and select 'Resize/Move'.
2. Drag the partition panel rightward or leftward to add unallocated space into your current partition and click 'OK' to confirm.
3. If there is no or not enough unallocated space on your disk, use the advanced partition resizing function to directly allocate free space from other partitions to the target drive without deleting or formatting.
Find the 'Allocate XX space from' option, then click 'Select partition'. Choose the partition from which you want to allocate space. Drag the partition panel rightward or leftward to resize the partition you want to extend. Then click 'OK' to confirm.
Step 3. Execute Operations to Extend Partition Xbox one game streaming.
Click the 'Execute Operation' button and click 'Apply' to keep all the changes.
Solution 4. Back Up Data and Initialize the Hard Drive
GPT header or MBR errors cause most disk size errors. Under these circumstances, initialization can resolve these problems.
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December 2021
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