Network Attached Storage (NAS) have a long track history of corporate deployments. Their scaled-down versions (ranging from single-bay to four-drive enclosures) are frequently used at homes and in offices. These smaller-size appliances are often called “personal clouds” for providing some parts of functionality of online cloud services.
More and more people prefer using their laptop computers at home instead of a full-size desktop. As many laptops are equipped with relatively small, non-expandable storage, NAS becomes an obvious and convenient way to increase available storage. In home environments, NAS storage are often used for keeping backups and/or storing large amounts of multimedia data such as videos, music and pictures, often including illicit materials. Due to the sheer size of these storage devices and their rapidly increasing popularity with home users, NAS forensics becomes increasingly important.
