The Geekworm sounds like a cool NAS. Does it have a web ui or only ssh? Did you use nvme or sata ssd?
OpenMediaVault is a very complete web GUI on top of Debian Linux.
https://www.openmediavault.org/screenshots.html
For x86 hardware they have turnkey installable OpenMediaVault ISOs, but for other CPU architectures you have to install plain Debian on it first, and without a graphical desktop interface or else OpenMediaVault will refuse to install. In the case of the Raspberry Pi getting Debian on it is super easy:
And from there you just log in via SSH (or I suppose via an HDMI monitor and USB keyboard if you have one) and then do some copy/pasta to install the OpenMediaVault repository and packages, which will perform a friendly takeover of the system configuration and hand over control to OpenMediaVault:
https://docs.openmediavault.org/en/stable/installation/on_debian.html
OpenMediaVault usually performs very consistently because it uses Salt for its configuration backend, so it acts like a commercial NAS receiving atomic firmware updates, not like a typical Linux system receiving piecemeal package updates even though that’s what is still technically happening behind the scenes. But even so it doesn’t prevent manual administrator configuration if desired. I’ve been using it for years and it’s really solid.
Just SATA SSD. The NASPi is basically just a Pi enclosure with an additional board for two 2.5" SATA drives and a connector to plug them into the Pi’s USB3 port without cables. Apart from the physical requirements of the NASPi I would have gone for the cheaper SATA SSD anyway because I have a relatively slow LAN and I mainly use WiFI, so I would never see any real world difference between SSD and NVMe.
Very cool, will read up about it.
I’m thinking about creating my own NAS.
Is the Raspberry Pi 4 good enough, or should I go with the more powerful/expensive Raspberry Pi 5?
Should I get a “starter kit” for the Raspberry Pi 4/5?
I’ll be attaching an external HDD and that’s what I’ll use for storage.
I would use my NAS to share movies over WiFi using Jellyfin. 
EDIT:
I guess I could just Google my questions, but I figured I’d see what BLF members think. 
Nevermind, I figured it out…
I’m going to get a Raspberry Pi 5 with some additional accessories and not get a starter kit.
I still have to do more research on what accessories to buy, though. 
Unless you need the Pi for other things, I’d go for either am X86 or a larger ARM board with native SATA/NVMe ports. USB HDD adapters in a NAS are a pain and cause more trouble than anything else.
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Can you tell me what to search for, or what’s the best budget pick?
I just use a ready-to-use Synology DS720+ with two 4 TB HDD. For DIY’ing a NAS I don’t have the patience (and time).
Probably a little bit overkill but it works perfectly with no issues.
What do you need? As in, how much storage, how many disks, raid (no/yes/which type), should the Nas do anything else like Plex/Jellyfin?
Any preferred NAS software? Do you want to set it up as a bare Linux or with some dedicated NAS software like OpenMediaVault or FreeNAS?
Depending on your needs and Linux skills, maybe consider a entry level Synology or similar?
Two hard drives, each as large in capacity as possible (at least 14TB).
No RAID.
I will be using Jellyfin, and maybe Blue Iris.
Maximum budget: about $150.
I can’t find anything that you’re talking about within my budget, except maybe a mini PC.
I’ve read that the Pi 5 is still pretty hard to obtain. If so, the Pi 4 is still very capable if you get the 4GB or 8GB model.
I’ve also read that USB → SATA adapters can be problematic. But I guess it depends on the specific implementation, the dual USB → SATA setup that came with my Geekworm NASPi Gemini has been flawless so far. It’s definitely not as performant as a board with native SATA, but for my needs it’s more than enough.
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I can find an 8GB RPi 5 on several websites for $80
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Okay… Jellyfin means I would take something that actually can encode/decode modern video codecs. Crunching AV1 and H265 on CPU is not fun.
ASRock N100DC-ITX looks fun with the very efficient and low power Intel N100 CPU. Needs a 19V power adapter (if you have some leftover power supply from an old notebook - can reuse that one, most had the same barrel jack as the board) and a single 8-16 GB RAM stick to work.
That should end up within budget, but it also still needs a case and a cheap SSD (some 256GB NVMe for the OS is ~20 bucks)…
Pi5 has no hardware encoders/decoders at all as far as I am aware, it would struggle with Jellyfin.
There’s also a lot of Rock, Odroid, Orange Pi, Banana Pi ARM boards but I am totally not informed what’s good and what isn’t there, as you need SATA and modern hardware video encoders/decoders…
People use RPi 5 with Jellyfin and x265 video.
When I say that my budget is about $150, that’s for everything required except the hard drives.
My nas is also massively overkill. I have a 2u 12-bay supermicro chassis, with a asrock rack mobo, AMD 5700x, 64GB ram, and almost 100TB (I’m currently at 96TB). Waiting for hdd prices to come down a little more before I buy more. I personally like to roll my own, so I run arch, and use mdadm to configure my own software raid.
It used to be part of my kubernetes cluster, but caused instability of my cluster when doing nas intensive jobs, so I removed it and now it’s just a nas. I eventually plan to build a second nas for high availability.
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The RPI solution will also need an enclosure, 2 USB to SATA cages with external power supplies, and a micro SD card, so imo the price difference between that and a N100 will not be that big in the end, but it gives hugely better performance and longevity…
Considering 14 TB of HDD space cost quite some money, I’d honestly take the few dollars over budget.
In Germany the ASRock is ~130$, a SSD ~20$, a RAM stick ~15$. Not sure about US pricing, usually that’s 10-20% below German prices because we got 19% tax on everything.
Pi5 is ~80$, USB HDD enclosures ~15-20$ a piece, SD card ~10$. Pretty close in the end.
Oops…
I was wrong about that.
It looks like Jellyfin recommends not using RPi. 
Those would work, but you’re in the “USB HDD” region again 
Some of them work pretty well, others don’t expose HDD power saving mechanisms to the OS which keeps them from idling properly. More research might be needed - unless you live in a place where electricity is cheap enough not to worry about 5-10W more or less.
Or do they have SATA connectors inside?
I increased my budget a bit.
Now I’m looking at this mini PC.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVLS7ZHP
It’s currently $179 after the $20 off coupon.
I’ll wait a while and see if the price drops.
I’m not worried about it not having SATA connections.
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