Have you been reviewing white box storage in search of a NAS alternative for your home office, small business, or personal storage needs?

We know it’s not an easy choice because there are a lot of brands and models to choose from that all seem to have the same features…

Look at the bright side – with so many storage alternatives available, the best part is you no longer need to pay a premium to get high performance at the lowest price per gigabyte.

White Box Storage Solutions White Box Storage

Nowadays nearly every disk manufacture offers a small NAS that can be used for backing up, streaming media, virtualization, and handling data storage.

Gone are the days of keeping all your files on your desktop system drive, only to have to copy all the files to each new computer you buy.

Do you remember before SSD storage was around, it would take hours to copy a 1TB SATA drive over a wireless network?

Or if you were techie enough you would chain the old drive to the ribbon cable of the new system or plug it directly into the motherboard.

But now with external storage or NAS, you can store or transfer all your important files to removable storage that you access via a USB port, your internal network, or over the Internet. How nice is that, right?

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Low-Cost Storage Options Best White Box Storage

Heck, for much less than a new cellphone, you can buy a white box storage solution such as a QNAP or Synology NAS that has redundant drives, SSD cache, and works with Windows, Linux, and MAC.

Once upon a time, these storage features were only available on big brands like NetApp, not any more…

Today, if you’re a small business owner and need storage for your business, it’s as easy as 1-2-3:

  1. Selecting a NAS device from a list that has enough drive bays for your capacity need.
  2. Then choosing from various HDD or SSD drives depending on your performance requirement.
  3. Finally, following a setup wizard to get everything working such as backup, file shares, and network access.

Sure, it takes some technical know-how, but a few years ago, it would require you to hire an expensive storage engineer to handle this job for you.

But that’s not all…

The same simple 1-2-3 setup also works for small NAS units for your home…

What is White Box Storage?

White Box External Storage

Our definition of white box storage (WBS) is a system or device that uses commodity hardware for a majority of its disk drives and other compute resource. As well as in some cases, open source software.

Consider these benefits:

1. Most of the white box storage solutions have good to great performance, multiple users can share files.

2. WBS can have redundant drives, so if a disk fails all your data has a second copy.

3. WBS uses low-cost drives so you don’t have to pay $1000s when a disk fails.

4. And white box storage devices can be bought online or at BestBuy, so you don’t have to deal with a storage vendor trying to upsell you for a larger commission.

5. Imagine this – WBS works with most small business networks and desktop operating systems so you don’t need any special software or training.

6. And because most of these low-cost NAS alternatives have so much in common, you can pick from brands you’re familiar with such as Seagate and Western Digital.

7. Plus, for a small addon amount, you can get an extended warranty that will repair or replace whichever storage solution you buy.

8. You have to admit this is almost unreal – since only a few years ago, this was only available with high-priced storage products.

9. One more benefit to these white box storage solution is when you run out of space, you can upgrade them by linking several together for more capacity.

10. If you don’t want to set up a NAS and you only want an external storage solution that uses a USB port, there are plenty of white box external storage options, too.

White Box Storage FAQ

White Box Storage Alternatives

Who buys white box storage? A lot of home office and small business owners. Plus, IT managers are finding ways to save precious budget dollars by building their own storage solutions out of low-cost commodity resources.

If I’m running my business out of a home office or I’m a small brick and mortar business, then what does white box storage do for me? Easy, it gives you time to grow. Basically allowing you to spend more budget dollars where you really need them, and not on expense storage solutions.

When a home office or small business owner looks at storage options, their main concerns are price, performance, reliability, and availability. With white box storage, you can get all of these benefits and more.

Is white box storage for everyone? No. Some people will only buy name brand storage units from Dell, HP, and NetApp which is fine. But, if you can’t afford these options then getting your business off the ground with a low-cost Synology or QNAP unit will work fine.

Can anyone set up a white box storage solution? No. If you have a hard time changing a printer cartridge, then you’ll likely be challenged with setting up a Netgear ReadyNAS. But that’s OK because many of the items listed will also provide a link for installation.

Why do I need a home office or small business NAS? If you’re always running out of disk space for your media files, or you have multiple people sharing documents, then a NAS is an easy solution that will give you more storage capacity and flexibility as your business grows.

Can all these benefits really be true?

Look, we know as long as you’re doing data backups and while you’re not a big shop with enterprise requirements then a white box storage alternative is the best home office, small business or personal storage solution for you. That said, your welcome to research Dell small business storage options, too…

Please feel free to share your comments and questions with us.

Thanks,

The WBS Team