I started with an old computer, then I moved to Raspberry Pi's and now in about to get rid of the last Pi since I'm replacing everting with small Lenovo or Intel PCs.

Whatever you do, make sure you setup firewall properly and enable automatic updates for your software. People say this last part is bad advice, but I'd rather have software break from an update than get ransomware'd.

Really depends on what you have, what you're trying to store, etc, etc.

Like we need more info.

I've been running a windows desktop as my "server" for years, with a large data drive, that's backed up by Crashplan.

It stores all our phone stuff - pictures, downloads, app Backups, etc, that get their via Syncthing and Foldersync.

I'm currently in the process of switching to a Raspberry Pi to handle a few things: Tailscale (mesh network), PiHole (for home network), Syncthing. It's data drive (however I decide to do that, direct connected or some kind of NAS) will be backed up to a service like Backblaze B2 or something like it.

The power draw if that desktop is massive compared to the Pi. Granted the Pi lacks horsepower, but it should be fine for what I need it to do.

I can only speak from my personal experience. But I knew nothing about self-hosting and went with a Synology NAS over three years ago and never looked back. I essentially replaced all Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, Evernote, music/video streaming, and per-PC backup services, with one device. LOL

Yes, the initial cost up front was not cheap. Yes, the cost of getting large HDDs is not cheap. But I broke even a while ago, and I'm actually saving money by self-hosting now.

You need lots of debodated wam