Title says pretty much all there is. Im just getting started in this and don’t want to go too crazy. Im willing to go as high as $250 right now which, when i look around, i know isn’t gonna get me anything absolutely amazing but hey back off im an instacart driver lol
I’ve got a QNAP. Relatively happy with it, as it’s easier to manage than DIY, but it’s hard to migrate to a different brand as the RAID implementation is proprietary, so can’t just plug the disks in a different brand. First NAS lasted about 7 years until it was too slow, new one is about 5 years and still going strong.
DIY gives you more flexibility, but also more maintenance.
More maintenance? Setup is harder for sure, but after that no more maintenance required if you don’t feel like it. To be frank the amount of maintenance is usually corelated with the amount of crap you install. a TrueNAS Scale will run just fine, maintenance free most likely for more than 5 years, however a clean Debian install with a simple Samba server (install via apt-get install) + FileBrowser (webUI file explorer) will last indefinitely without maintenance. Simple tools fail less.