[gamersim18]

I was thinking about purchasing a network attached storage system for my home wireless network, but I was just wondering if I were to get one would it need a OS like Windows Home Sever 2011? Or if it already comes with a OS then could I install a different sever OS like Windows Sever 2012?

[LincolnSpector]

AFAIK, every NAS comes with its own built-in OS, often a variation on Linux. But it's not something you can change or have to worry about. It's extremely limited and does its job.

Lincoln

[smax013]

LincolnSpector, on 21 January 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

AFAIK, every NAS comes with its own built-in OS, often a variation on Linux. But it's not something you can change or have to worry about. It's extremely limited and does its job.

Lincoln

Lincoln is correct. Anything sold/advertised as an NAS will come with its own OS and 99.99% of the time it will be some sort of Linux based OS that you can't really change.

You can buy or build a computer that then run something like FreeNAS (with is based off of BSD). Thus, it is possible that someone might sell/advertise an NAS device that is essentially a computer running FreeNAS.

But, "brand name" NAS devices (i.e. Netgear ReadyNAS, Synology, etc) will have their own, nominally non-replaceable OS.

From what I have seen, anything sold with Windows Home Server on it was nominally called a Server (typically maybe something like Home Server).