n00b question, sorry. If I had a desktop that could hold 4 HD and 2 SSD, could I turn it into a NAS? Could someone point me in the right direction if this makes sense?
yes, try freenas/truenas
It’ll work fine. A NAS is just a PC. Try Unraid if you want a user friendly UI. It costs money but it’s only a one off payment for a lifetime license, and they have a free trial.
Or truenas
You totally can, but since it will be on all day with 4 hdd look into wattages you want to live with. There are some small NUCs or Pi based NAS with low wattages. There is OpenMediaVault, FreeNAS/TrueNAS software to install
Hey sorry, thinking on this more, could I just turn on the NAS when desired? What is the benefit of running it constantly?
Yep, look into Wake On LAN if you just want to power the NAS on remotely.
My NAS also powers on at certaIn times of day and off again after a while - IF - no-one’s connected / no network traffic / etc.
I do NOT need my NAS on at 3am…
Edit : forgot to say, check out OpenMediaVault
Note that there is some reliability drawback of spinning hard disks on and off repeatedly. maybe unintuitively HDDs that spin constantly can live much longer than those that spend 90% of their time spun down.
This might not be relevant if you use only SSDs, and might never affect you, but it should be mentioned.