Building an affordable NAS

I would never build by myself a NAS device that has tremendous role in modern life. Raid 1/5 is essential for protecting hw failures and commercial products are the only one to trust completely. Synology is the only choose. Believe me.

I have a Synology DS214Play. It had features I didn't know I wanted or needed. It has allowed me to keep my stuff backed up in multiple places in multiple ways and multiple formats. However, their support is shoddy. I had a failure of the NAS hardware once. (Ethernet port failed). It took weeks to get a response from Synology (as support relied on a serial number that was invalid) and once they did get back to me, were rude. The replaement wasn't much better (it worked, but the ethernet lights would never turn on).  Also, they have a bit of a learning curve. It is a different OS (some cusotm Linux distro). It is powerful, but clunky. I have had the system automatically update, but fial to update the underlying packages (despite being set to automatically update) causing hundreds of GB of data to not be properly backed up for months until I caught the problem. Also there is no way to just remote-desktop. I noticed QNAP has models that let you just plug into the drive and start moving files around just like you can on a desktop. Home NAS is not a pancea. It is better than nothing, but not for the technically inexperienced... Were it not for cost, I'd recomend some kind of microsoft based system instead. I miss my WHS box.

Yep, I have a QNAP TS-453A and it was essentially just a matter of plugging in the drives. It has tonnes of features, I assume very similar to Synology. It allows you to run different OS's (via VM) out of the box such as Windows or Linux... but so far I have just stuck with the onboard OS. It really was "plug and play", although it still takes time to figure out all the settings, how to use Plex/Kodi etc, best way to organise backups/files/media etc. After 10 months I haven't had any issues at all. It also plugs directly into my TV / Home Theatre system via HDMI so I don't need another PC / console to connect to it. Although, to be honest it doesn't always display things properly (apps appear bigger than the actual screen, might be an issue with my older TV) so I tend to use Plex on the Xbox One in the other loungeroom, or just remotely connect via PC/tablet etc. I did a lot of research before I bought it, and actually planned on buying 1 x Qnap and 1 x Synology (for physical separation of backups, one near my PC, one near my main TV). I had 8 x 4 TB WD Red drives ready to go, bought the QNAP (after a lot of research & finding a good deal) and use 4 of the drives. I kept researching Synology's but couldn't find any good deals for the ones I wanted. I was also building a new gaming rig at the time, and ended up deciding to just stick with the single NAS for backups and putting the 4 x 4 TB in my gaming PC (in RAID) for general storage and localised backups (that essentially get synched with the QNAP, in a similar way to how the Synology & QNAP would Sync). In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't buy a second NAS as it would've been overkill... I am very happy with my QNAP, but I would consider a Synology in the future just to try it out. I doubt that'll be anytime soon, as the QNAP does everything I need currently.

I agree with the RAID option. It's essential. Else I would use a portable HDD. Well I had a Supermicro Atom 2550 mini itx beautiful mother/cpu combo with 16gb ECC and I found laying around two WD HDDs 2tb each (black & blue) and have a compact coolmaster case so.. I bit the bullet. I already have a mybooklive but this server should allow for cool services like owncloud and Aria2.  And maybe some docker/vm. I started with Freenas 9 then Corral but.. moved to bare Debian 8.