Patent ID: 8300098

Claim:
In a network attached storage (NAS) device, a method of providing access to video data, the method comprising: detecting access to a video camera from the NAS device through a network; receiving a video store command from a user workstation through the network, the video store command directing the NAS device to store video data provided by the video camera to the NAS device through the network; and storing the video data provided by the video camera to the NAS device through the network in response to the video store command; wherein the NAS device is a dedicated data storage server which is dedicated to file sharing; wherein the method further comprises: processing file-based data storage requests from a set of user workstations in accordance with a set of file sharing protocols while concurrently (i) the dedicated data storage server stores the video data provided by the video camera, and (ii) the set of user workstations carryout general-purpose computing tasks separately from the dedicated data storage server, and performing, as a set of file-based data storage services provided by the dedicated data storage server to the set of user workstations, file backup routines and file restoration operations to backup and recover files on behalf of the set of user workstations; wherein the dedicated data storage server runs an operating system optimized to process the file-based data storage requests, the operating system including a built-in video camera discovery module; and wherein detecting access to the video camera from the NAS device through the network includes: automatically detecting connection of the video camera to the network using the built-in video camera discovery module of the operating system running on the dedicated data storage server.