When I was an IT manager I setup a RAID1 array on a DIY Linux build for the small business I worked for. A few years in we had a hardware failure that took down the server. I don't remember the details, but we lost access to the files and everyone including me was panicking.

With all the pressure and a healthy dose of incompetence, I was struggling to wield the power of mdadm to recover the files. The bosses were in a rush so they had me send the drives to a recovery service. They were able to recover everything, even though one of the drives was toast. I think it cost the company $3,000 USD.

From that point onward, we used Synology diskstations (NAS.)

I was pretty happy with them. They had a good web UI which showed me how to set it up and would make suggestions. Mostly maintenance free; they were like little robots that did everything for me. When I was getting familiar with them, I tested yoinking a drive while it was running and replacing it with an empty drive. It started using the new drive right away and mirroring files to it. I loved how effortless it was.

We had a second Diskstation off-site, and set it up to receive nightly backups from the main office. It was another built-in feature that just worked without much fiddling.

If I were to set up a NAS today, I don't know what solution I'd go with. It's a deep rabbit hole and I'd probably have to do more research to see what works best for me. I know there is truenas which I could virtualize on proxmox. In the past I heard Linus Tech Tips praise unraid and I'd be tempted to try one of those because they look cool. And there's those cheap UGREEN NAS on Amazon and I have no idea if they're good or not. Then there's terra-master and of course Drobo which was the trendy thing for influencers back in the day...

yeah I'll stop there, but best of luck with whatever you choose!

P.S. I almost forgot-- every home should have a 45 drives Storinator 😜