If you’re like me, you’ve probably got way too much media. More movies and music than one person can possibly consume. There is a strange appeal to that kind of digital hoarding. It’s actually what prompted me to set up my first Network Attached Storage device. Technically, things have been made a bit easier for me with the help of Apple’s Airport Extreme, but anyone can put together a NAS of their own for enjoying content as far as your network will reach (and often beyond).

Gizmodo put together a guide for getting the most out of your NAS that I thought was worth sharing.

Getting a NAS set up as a simple file share is mostly a plug-and-play process. (More on that here.) And in raw form, it’s a dead-simple concept: Here’s a bunch of storage space that you can share among your home computers, over the network. But with a little work, you can do so much more than that, converting your NAS from a begrudging purchase in the name of caution to a vital piece of your very computing existence.

Take a few minutes to check out the ways a NAS can change your digital life.

Yesterday, LaCie announced the XL version of the popular Rugged hard drive line, bringing storage limits up to 1TB. The award-winning Rugged drives come dressed in a sturdy aluminum case. Add some internal shock absorbers and the durable protection of a magnum-sized orange rubber sleeve and you’ve got one of the most shock-proof storage solutions on the market.

Thankfully, the Rugged XL supports both USB 2.0 and eSATA transfer technologies for speeds up to 3.0Gb/s. I’m usually not a fan of bundled backup software, but the LaCie version, the Genie Backup Assistant, is a breeze. For more information, including a giant self back-patting for the orange sleeve design, check out the company press release.