Black friday in general is pretty lackluster lately, but keep in mind that you’re looking for deals on items that don’t really experience the seasonal variability that other consumer products do. People (generally, this sub aside lol) aren’t putting HDDs under the christmas tree.

Internal 5TB 2.5" drives are expensive for their capacity and don’t fit in many consumer 2.5" bays due to their excess height. You’re better off getting a 3.5" external that you can shuck when you later upgrade cases. It’ll also get you more capacity for your money.

It’s a mess; you have to approach every title individually. I keep all my old games but the reality is that without people posting guides on reddit, i would stand very little chance making most of them work on my own.

Buy cheap used PC components, toss those 10 6TB drives into a large case, use your OS of choice, add the SSDs as a cache array, and you’re good to go.

My main concern is just the complications with having new NAS.

Can you actually articulate these complications? Is ‘consolidation’ the singular issue that’s giving you pause? Because that’s not an issue at all.

I’m currently running Synology hardware but what if I want to move it out of the ecosystem?

Why would moving out of their ecosystem be an issue?