I just moved from a home server to a proper NAS (Synology) box. The home server was a plain Debian with a 256GB SSD and 2x2TB disks in RAID 1. The NAS I moved

I just moved from a home server to a proper NAS (Synology) box. The home server was a plain Debian with a 256GB SSD and 2x2TB disks in RAID 1. The NAS I moved to is a Synology DS716+II. I kept the home server as a workstation and both HDD moved to the NAS. I don't know about FreeNAS because the reviews were too bad for me to go down that route. Between DIY and NAS, the comparison summed up as: - in terms of performance a DIY server is much better than a NAS. NAS come with laughable specs. This is a comparison of the 4 years old CPU that was on my home server and the one bundled with my NAS: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-N3160-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4440 http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-N3160-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4440 - a NAS is pretty much plug and play - a lot of reviews raved about Synology's interface. I would rate it as average. It works and seems to do the job but it is not intuitive. - If you want Plex (really cool!) you need to either get a high end NAS (the DS716+II seem to work fine) or have a home server in addition to your NAS (NAS' are often not powerful enough to transcode videos). - the price of NAS hardware is insane. Although there are good deals on ebay if you're ok with 2+ years old hardware. When buying a NAS, you also pay for its software. - NAS allow to easily make REAL backups. That means incremental snapshots that allow you to rollback. Replicating the data is NOT a proper backup solution. If you value plug-and play a lot and want to spend your life doing other things, NAS is the way to go. If you want to tinker and DIY, a HTPC with mini-itx and a small case is the best choice. In my case, getting older, I get tired of DIY and want things to just work. NAS it is. So far I don't regret it. Google, read forums and you'll have many more opinions than just my own on what solution will suit you best.