I built a home NAS and realized most people don’t actually need one
Before building my home NAS, I spent weeks convincing myself it was needed. However, several YouTube videos and Reddit threads in which people talked about RAID arrays, Plex libraries, and data ownership were all the motivation I needed. The ideas of no subscriptions and no dependence on Big Tech were appealing. My NAS actually delivered on most of the promises, and this was exactly why my realization felt somewhat uncomfortable. With months of a well-run system, beautifully set up Plex, and healthy backups, I still found myself reaching for an external SSD and using Netflix more than the media library I had built. My NAS was great, but it was a solution to a problem I might have invented. Setting up the NAS felt like leveling up Owning it felt strangely ordinary I enjoyed sliding the drives into bays, creating storage pools, and every other aspect of the setup. I was achieving something big in ways my external drives don’t typically permit. And it was amazing to stare at the software dashboard. I had finally …








