graph TD Start[Start Choosing a Storage Solution] --> Q1{Is your total data
under 4TB?} Q1 -->|Yes| Q2{Do multiple devices
need access?} Q1 -->|No| Q3{Is your budget
over ~$400?} Q2 -->|No| Q2a{Do you want
automatic backups?} Q2 -->|Yes| NAS1[2-bay entry NAS
Synology / QNAP
Built-in filesystem] Q2a -->|No| HDD[External drive
Cheapest & simplest
Manual backups] Q2a -->|Yes| NAS1 Q3 -->|No| HDD Q3 -->|Yes| Q4{Linux experience?} Q4 -->|No| NAS2[4-bay prebuilt NAS
Synology / QNAP
RAID5 / SHR] Q4 -->|Yes| Q5{Willing to spend time
learning & maintaining?} Q5 -->|No| NAS2 Q5 -->|Yes| Q6{More than 20TB
of data?} Q6 -->|No| Q7{Is maximum data
integrity critical?} Q6 -->|Yes| Q8{Budget over ~$1,400?} Q7 -->|No| Q7a{Less than
8GB RAM?} Q7 -->|Yes| Q7b{At least
16GB RAM?} Q7a -->|Yes| MDADM1[mdadm RAID1/10
Flexible & cheap] Q7a -->|No| Q7b Q7b -->|No| MDADM1 Q7b -->|Yes| ZFS1[ZFS on Linux / TrueNAS
Checksums & snapshots] Q8 -->|No| Q9{At least
32GB RAM?} Q8 -->|Yes| Q10{High random I/O
performance needed?} Q9 -->|No| MDADM2[mdadm RAID6/10
Large arrays] Q9 -->|Yes| ZFS2[ZFS RAIDZ2
Large storage pools] Q10 -->|Yes| HWRAID[Hardware RAID
BBU protected cache] Q10 -->|No| ZFS2