There is no cloud, only someone elses computer.

Local storage is great for you.

It’s absolutely fucking terrible for end users that you have to support.

got me a 14 TB WD Easystore off eBay for $250 a few months ago.

Too dumb to set up nextcloud, first I bought a WD NAS which I kinda stopped using because of slow transfer speeds and a hacking attack that put the service down for days. Currently using three physical HD (two at home and one in my locker at work) all with the same copy of a Veracrypt container. Never been happier tbh.

UnRaid is a great choice for this and will run on virtually any x86 hardware.