Looking to get a NAS but don’t want to spend too much starting out. I have the opportunity to buy a used custom built NAS with much better specs than what I would probably be able to get from something like a synology NAS. It seems like a really good deal but I’m not sure how difficult/time-consuming it will be to configure for my use case or if it will be better to stick to synology software. Also, is the software to use the NAS after configuration not user friendly or well supported?
My use case is to store photos and videos and device backups from time machine for my mac. I’d also like to be able to remotely access the data over the internet.
yes and off-the-shelf unit is great for the family who aren’t that tech literate - it can just sit on the shelf and do it’s thing but you will still need to monitor and update it.
That CPU in the custom nas could also be more powerful than what you get in the off-the-shelf providing you with more flexibility.
It could start off as a nas today and tomorrow you to turn it into a virtualised server with the NAS software running as virtual machine.
Or you could find that you’re shifting very large files around and need 10GBe ethernet and high performace which could start to choke a Synology or QNAP NAS with an ARM processor.