Glossary of Western Digital Hard Disk Drive (Letter N)

NAS
Network attached storage. Hard disk storage that is set up with its own network address rather than being attached to the computer that is serving network workstation users.

NAT
Network Address Translation. Used in gateway devices that form the boundary between the public Internet and the private LAN. As IP packets from the private LAN traverse the gateway, NAT translates a private IP address and port number to a public IP address and port number, tracking those translations to keep individual sessions intact.

NCQ
Native command queuing. A command protocol implemented only on native SATA hard drives. It allows multiple commands to be outstanding within a drive at the same time. Drives that support NCQ have an internal queue where outstanding commands can be rescheduled and re-ordered dynamically, along with necessary tracking mechanisms for outstanding and completed parts of the workload. NCQ also has a mechanism that allows the host to issue additional commands to the drive while the drive is seeking data for another command.

NetCenter™
Trade name for WD’s first generation external network hard drive.

network computer
A computer with limited data storage capacity that communicates with a central data storage facility such as a server or RAID system.

NFS
NT file system. A file system, designed for Windows® NT, that supports long filenames, security access control, recovery, and other features.

NTFS
NT file system. A file system, designed for Windows® NT, that supports long filenames, security access control, recovery, and other features.

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