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I'm coming to the same conclusion. I was running Freenas and my file server died and then my files were locked up on that host. Luckily I was using Syncthing to the central file server but I just added new links between individual devices and then it didn't matter that my file server died (except for files that were not on any non-server device). File servers are annoying for disconnected usage. I was using duplicacy for backups but the storage format is annoying (not just regular files) and nothing is more reliable than regular file systems. So now with my new setup I'm using a Rpi4b with NixOS and ZFS data drive over a USB3 dual drive docking station with UASP. I can boot from a USB3 thumb drive (which I do) or an SSD in the docking station and still have another SATA port for the data drive. (The downside of this is RAID doesn't work over USB.)

I'll have two of the same RPi servers in different locations with all software running (like a hot swap) with Syncthing keeping them in sync while ZFS snapshots keeps a history. I can plug in a cold storage drive in the second dock slot once in a while too. I'll have a spare RPi4b on the shelf in case it dies. If my server dies I can take the off site hot backup home and reconfig the network and then it is my primary server. With remote duplicacy backup I'm days away from getting going again. So ZFS snapshots + Syncthing and cold storage is where I'm going (for home use). Also I want to stick with Linux because I set up Freenas 5 years ago and now I forget how to admin it so I'd rather just keep with ZFS and Linux (the zfs send from freenas to zfs recv on Linux works perfectly).