[[Import Apple Music to Plex]] > Well, if you can fit everything you want within, say, 8TB you might want a 2-drive NAS like the DS220+ by Synology or the Buffalo LinkStation 720. The former I'm more familiar with; you just plug in 2 hard drives, set up the storage pool (I believe you're required to use RAID, so both drives are a single pool, so you'd want ), connect it to a router, and you can almost immediately access it from the network. Plex is in the synology app store (Synology NAS devices run a proprietary OS that can't be changed). You'd need to set up a folder for Plex's system files, folders to put your media in, and then you'd be able to run it from basically anything with an internet connection, or use the Synology custom software (they have custom Android apps, even). Since there's no dedicated graphics hardware there's going to be limitations on how much you can transcode at once, but the device is pretty quiet, small, and energy efficient. Good choice if you're not interested in having some expansive device to do lots of services and just something to do media in. Only other major downside is higher upfront cost (a lot of decommissioned workstation hardware can be gotten online for about $200 vs the $300ish for one of these totally prebuilt units, or even cheaper if you just use like an older Dell or similar) from a more DIY build. I'm not as familiar with the Buffalo hardware but it has similar specs and you can get it at the same price with HDDs included. Synology gives you net access included by default and the device can be used as a VPN as well. > > If you want something cheaper you can look at decommissioned and refurbished workstation and office PCs, because you can usually find them for much lower prices, and they tend to be a little more flexible. Then you could add a mid-range GPU (though this might mean you lose out on the potential for cost savings) and have more flexibility with transcoding, and potentially have more room to add additional hard drives into the device. I got an old HP Z440 that eventually broke down; I salvaged all the hardware that still worked into a new case and motherboard and now I have a system with like 5 hard drives for storage, though I'm not using RAID. If you were to go down this route you'd probably want to get an Intel ARC GPU (since they're better suited to video encoding than, say, nvidia or amd and can probably be gotten cheaper) and install TrueNAS on the hard drive. (I actually run Windows because this is also my gaming server that I use Parsec or Moonlight to access remotely. If it weren't being used for gaming, I'd probably run TrueNAS as well.) You'll need to set up domain name registration yourself using something like DuckDNS (or use something like TailScale for a VPN and access by IP address) if you want to access it off your home network. >