The Pursuit of Homelabs, Part 2 – What Are My Options?

Buy/build a NAS and use my desktop – A NAS (Network-Attached Storage) is a small computer (not a lot of RAM, OK at best CPU) with a TON of storage. Most NASs come with 2 to 8 hard drives (or hard drive bays), are pretty energy efficient, and can be convenient for setting up home backups for your other devices and serving up files on your home intranet. Despite their traditionally tiny size, a NAS would take care of any storage issues I’d have and could probably handle one or two of the projects I’ve got on my list, but not much more. On top of that, pre-built NASs, even driveless ones, run a pretty penny ($600 or more, PLUS hard drives!). Since storage isn’t a problem with my current desktop, this wouldn’t solve any problems. The one upside is that you can run a stellar Plex server with high up time on most NAS boxes, so if you’re looking to just run Plex and have a second copy of your computers’ files, a NAS could be a good solution for you. Considering I’d have to engineer problems to solve with this solution, coupled with a high price tag, this also seems to be a no go for now.