Just external - I know it’s not the best solution. My setup grew on a tight budget over the last 10 years and for me it was the easiest, most affordable, and extendable/replaceable way. I don’t need super fast drives in my home and I don’t need backups for most of the data stored on a media server. So it kind of is just a bunch of disks with a NUC.
The internal drive for the system is an SSD though. Came with the computer.
I have a very similar setup like you. A NUC is providing NAS functionality and is running 24/7. An AppleTV is connected to the projector and has all the apps I need for consuming media (Jellyfin, Netflix, etc.). The NAS is running OG Debian with SMB, Jellyfin and even NFS for easy access.
The NUC provides additional features like synching and a few other things.
Why the AppleTV? Because I had Raspis, FireTVs, PCs, and whatnot connected to the projector and the AppleTV is hands down the most convenient one. The UI is super reduced and simple. The remote works. You can get just about every app you might need. And maintainance is basically zero.
deleted by creator
Never heard if him ¯\(ツ)/¯