Storing information and supervising its storage is critical to a company’s success. There are many options available to businesses for both the actual storage and the location of that storage. Often, the best solution is a combination of different storage options.

In computing, a Storage Area Network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries) to servers in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear as locally attached. Although cost and complexity are dropping, as of 2007, SANs are still uncommon outside larger enterprises.

By contrast to a SAN, Network Attached Storage (NAS) uses file-based protocols such as NFS or SMB/CIFS where it is clear that the storage is remote, and computers request a portion of an abstract file rather than a disk block.

Data recovery is the process of recovering data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media formats such as hard disk drive, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. This can be due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.