Indeed, there is definitely something better. The most attractive option I found, after much deliberation, was called NextCloud. It's free and very secure, but requires a little more legwork/technical understanding (or honestly probably just patience). I didn't put in much effort at all with NextCloud, not because it was insurmountable, but just because my personal "cloud" doesn't store anything that really needs to be ultra secure. It's something like 15% family photos, 20% music (streaming music from my living room gives me such a thrill hahaha), 55% movies and tv shows and 10% is, for lack of a better way to say it easily, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory videos lol. ...so for my purposes I wanted something I could get up and running super quick, even if it meant leaving a papertrail of duplicates somewhere on DropBox's server.
DropBox is only used for transferring files from my phone to the NAS. Once the transfer is complete, I move the files out of the DropBox location and over to fixed storage on one of the 4TB external drives that's connected.
Plex is super cool, I believe I can even send links to my content, so I could share videos or music with you for example, by just sending a link and granting read/view permissions. Plex will let you either enable access on a personal/email/account basis, or to anyone who has the link - but this way I am able to share my rare movies with friends, and I don't have to worry if the videos will get taken down since they're hosted from my own personal server.
If you're ever looking to get started, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have or help in any way I can, I had honestly a lot of fun getting mine up and running and it's super cool to know that my "cloud" stored photos are actually just on a hard drive behind my couch 🤣
That’s awesome dude. I think my main question right now is the computer. It’s on 24/7 I’m guessing, so you have to have a monitor plugged into it or did you unplug the peripherals since it’s a waste of electricity? Also are you wired or wireless connection to that? I think those are some good topics for now but certainly looking to do something like this so I can have my own personal cloud. I wonder if I could use proton instead of drop box for the file transfer stuff.