I wanted my NAS to be something that sits in the background, helping me go about my workday without demanding a lot of attention. What I wanted was a balance of reliability and ease of use, because I didn’t want to spend a lot of time tinkering with the NAS every other day when something broke.

I began my journey with a Synology NAS just because it offered me that exact kind of convenience and trust. DSM — Synology’s NAS OS — came with a clean interface on the surface and powerful mechanics underneath to handle everything you threw at it. I just got the enclosure, popped in the hard drives of my choice, and I was all set. I didn’t need to think about any compatibility concerns; after all, it gave me control and let me decide what hardware I wanted.

A lot of things have changed since. My NAS was due for an update after serving me for several years. But I quickly learned that my older drives wouldn’t work with the newer Synology model I was looking to upgrade to. That was a solid bummer. I know Synology has now reversed its decision to restrict drive compatibility to its first-party drives, but I had made up my mind to go down the DIY route before that.

Stepping outside the Synology life

There is a whole world of network storage outside it

Synology has long maintained a compatibility list for drives, so it wasn’t entirely new. And if you want to run a plug-and-play system, especially as a first-time user with no older NAS hard drives that you want to reuse, this ecosystem approach still probably works. But over the years, that list has shrunk and gotten stricter. That’s a no-go territory for someone who likes to tinker with their system and mix components without adhering to any artificially set hardware restrictions.

Once you escape the Synology bubble, you get to see a whole world of alternatives that you perhaps ignored earlier. There are a ton of brands offering excellent pre-built NAS hardware without such arbitrary restrictions. And then there is an even bigger world of custom network storage units that can range from old laptops to mini PCs purpose-built to manage your storage. Furthermore, platforms like Unraid and TrueNAS give a rather mature operating system that is not only fairly easy to set up but also maintain, while being as powerful and capable as any popular alternative.

I, for one, don’t prefer building my own NAS for all the complexities and maintenance work I must routinely do on my own, but it did give me a push to explore the world of DIY NAS.

Building the NAS I actually wanted

And it left me surprised

Building a DIY NAS often sounds like a week-long project, requiring you to spend time assembling components, looking up guides, going down the Reddit rabbit hole to find that one piece of information, installing software patches, and whatnot. But it turned out to be a lot simpler, and a lot of credit goes to the component choices I made.

I went for a compact PC chassis that takes a few 3.5-inch drives and has NVMe slots. Most of the cost went into a processor decent enough to handle Plex transcoding and ample RAM to let me run a handful of processes simultaneously. Unlike Synology, I didn’t have to check a compatibility list, and there were far fewer restrictions to deal with.

Installing the operating system was the easiest part — TrueNAS Scale made it that much easier for me. I faced almost no issues setting it up, and the interface felt modern and intuitive with enough flexibility to run whatever apps I chose. The system had sufficient headroom for my future expansions. The only real hiccup I faced was that a couple of my apps, like Immich and Nextcloud, needed some manual tweaking to run the way I wanted. It wasn’t too difficult, and honestly, that’s something you have to expect from a DIY setup.

But that’s not even the best part. The entire setup cost me less than the Synology setup I was planning for, saving me about 20% upfront. That’s while giving me more storage flexibility, computing power with my processor of choice, and fewer limitations.

Synology is still great

But I’ve now moved on

I still reckon that Synology makes the most polished operating system and first-party apps on the market, which is particularly great for those new to NAS or those who want something straightforward to live with. With the hard drive restrictions removed, it remains a solid NAS option that requires minimal fiddling and an ecosystem that just works — I’m a fan of Synology’s Active Backup, which worked better for me than Windows’ own backup tool.

But at the point where I need more flexibility to choose my own drives with a new enclosure, Synology fell short, nudging me to go against my notions and try building a custom NAS. By skipping the hardware chores by a huge margin using a mini PC, it saved me both time and money. I’m hoping that it will stay with me and be as reliable as my previous Synology has been, if not more. Because even after putting together my own NAS, I don’t wish for it to break every few days, requiring me to spend each weekend tinkering with it. That’s still non-negotiable.