Or: don't build a NAS at all and just put the hard drives in the machine you intend to use. This has many advantages including: price, performance, reliability, not having to run an entire second computer (just leave the computer on and sharing files if other computers on your LAN also use the files), intuitive and natural file management using non-proprietary software, simple drive formats that are easily recoverable with simple/normal tools if there is a problem, no silly tuning stuff because the files are already there.
NAS do make sense in some contexts. But over the last decade they've become something people do just to do because it's hip. It usually makes much more sense just to put your storage drives in the computer you'll use them in.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people setting up NASes didn't have a desktop to put drives into. Lots of people are only using laptops or phones nowadays
That's true. But those aren't the people thinking about setting up NASes. Or at least not in my tech support experience. Those people will just have giant fragile octopuses of external USB drives.
But it is a problem that most people don't have capable computers anymore. :\
I don't understand this. I use a laptop that I don't want to carry many files on, and that I often bring with me when I leave the house. I have NAS at home to hold my data and run services, including CI. It seems perfectly fine, even wonderful. I use mdadm and cryptsetup, which are non-proprietary pieces of software that set up simple, documented drive formats that are easily recoverable with simple/normal tools if there is a problem.
I have no idea how having a NAS would make somebody hip. Very strange disco. Everybody should have one.
Your comment makes much more sense if you also want to have a desktop,and only in some network configurations. It's most likely the minority use case, but worth considering if it might fit.
A lot of people just use laptops and tablets / phones with limited storage expansion space at home, and want a dedicated device for a firewall/router anyways (no worries about reboots or other interruptions due to personal work on that computer, etc).
One more powerful computer to use as both NAS and firewall (and for various shared services...) makes a lot of sense much of the time - hence the popularity of proxmox.