I've been a proponent of having a NAS since I built one as a DIY project from an old PC I had lying around. It's been a phenomenal addition to my apartment that I get a lot of use out of, so much so that I think there are a few reasons why anyone should have one of the best NAS devices out there.

To be clear, when I say NAS, I mean any machine you can connect to and store data, run applications, or access from outside your network with a tool like Tailscale or WireGuard. It's one of the best additions I've made to my home in the last year, and these are some of my favorite reasons why.

5 Build a home surveillance system

Home Assistant is one of the best open source applications I've ever used

Picture this: you're away from your home for a while and want to make sure you can watch the place while you're gone. All you have are some webcams and a NAS, and you want to access those video streams from outside your home securely and easily. In my case, I used a tool called Home Assistant.

Home Assistant is exactly what it sounds like; it's an application that can aid in all kinds of ways in your home and with your smart devices. I hooked up a webcam pointed at my hallway from my PC, had that video stream accessible on my local network through Yawcam, and then added that camera to Home Assistant for processing. From there, I could see my hallway on my phone from anywhere.

My rudimentary webcam setup is nowhere near the limitations of Home Assistant, either. It supports countless integrations like Google Assistant, Alexa, Philips Hue, Sonos, HomeKit Bridge, and so much more. It's ridiculously versatile, and I can see why it's one of the best NAS applications people recommend.

4 Host a home media server

Watch all of your shows and movies, anywhere, all the time

With a NAS, you can access your TV shows and movies from anywhere, thanks to software like Jellyfin and Plex. Jellyfin, like Plex, is a home media server that you can scan your vast library of content, and it'll automatically sort it for easy traversal in several apps that you can use to stream anywhere. It's essentially a Netflix that you build yourself.

In an era where content distributors like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ are all increasing their prices, it makes sense that you'd want to take back a little bit of control. While we don't condone sailing the high seas when it comes to using the likes of Jellyfin and Plex, you can purchase box sets and DVDs for cheap nowadays and rip them yourself to store on a NAS. Even better, Jellyfin and Plex will transcode them and automatically adjust the resolution and bitrate if you're on the go, just like Netflix would.

3 Store all of your photos privately

PhotoPrism is nearly as good as Google Photos

If you want to store photos in the cloud, off your devices, but you don't like the idea of not being in control of your data, then a combination of Nextcloud and PhotoPrism might be for you. Nextcloud is basically a way to host your own Dropbox server, where you can sync your files and folders to it from anywhere, so long as you can access it externally. PhotoPrism is then a Google Photos replacement, where it will use AI to analyze your photos to identify objects, faces, and places locally on your NAS. Nothing gets sent anywhere else.

I use PhotoPrism a lot, and the system I have set up under TrueNAS is a custom storage container mounted in Nextcloud and accessible by PhotoPrism. From there, PhotoPrism will routinely scan any photos that upload, and I have automatic syncing of my photos and videos from my phone to my Nextcloud instance, where they're dropped straight into that custom container. It means I'm in control, and without my WireGuard VPN profile, nobody can gain access to the photos externally.

It's not a direct replacement for Google Photos and won't get all the integration that Photos has, but it's good enough that I'm happy with it.

2 Run a home backup system

Always have redundancy

If you store many important files on your computer, it's good to have backups. Google Drive and OneDrive are two places where people would love to store their data, but again, when it comes to control, you can't beat having a local server that you can back up. At the very least, use it as an additional failsafe just in case you lose access to your files in a cloud-based option.

Again, I use Nextcloud for this, and in a lot of my programming projects, I have automatically synced to my Nextcloud instance. Not only does this mean that they're always safe (so when I broke my Mac screen, I still had all of my programming projects I didn't have on GitHub), but I can easily access anything I do on any device. I highly recommend setting up Nextcloud even just for storing your personal files.

When it comes to backups, that's one of the main reasons to have a NAS, to be honest. It stands for Network Attached Storage after all, and this is the very definition of storage with a network attached.

1 Run game servers

Minecraft works great on TrueNAS

You can run Minecraft servers very easily on a NAS, especially a TrueNAS, thanks to MineOS. I run a Minecraft server for my girlfriend and a couple of her friends, and it was very easy to set up and work so that it was accessible from outside our personal network. It's free, easy to set up, and has a web UI for controlling it, too, so any problems don't require delving into a CLI and messing about with configuration files.

That's not all, though, as other game servers can be run too. You can run Source engine servers such as Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, or you can even run something like a Teamspeak 3 server if you want to speak with friends. There are many options when it comes to gaming if you have a NAS, and it can give you a lot of choices that you wouldn't have had previously or would have had to pay for separately.

A NAS has something for everyone

If you're reading XDA, chances are you're interested in at least one of the options here. There's really something for everyone when you have a NAS, and I never expected it to be such a rewarding and fun project when I first started using it. You can do so much more, too, such as network-wide advertisement blocking, meal planning applications, dynamic DNS updating, and so much more. If you're only just getting started on your NAS journey, then enjoy yourself; it's a fun ride.