datahoarder
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
-- 5-4-3-2-1-bang from this thread
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It really depends on what your ultimate goal is.
NAS is great for centralized storage for multiple devices to access. But isn't totally necessary if your just looking to store data and access that date on a single device at a time. don't discount buying two external hard drives. one for storage and the other for backup.
If you really want a NAS Then there are many options. You could go a prebuilt solutions, Synology, QNAP, TerraMaster etc..
If you have an old computer laying around, that can be an option as well (Although power usage could be an issue. )
The biggest mistake I see new comers make, is thinking putting multiple drives together in a redundant configuration (RAID) is a backup. This isn't the case you better off going with 2 single drives and have a daily backup between the two of them.