It should work - I have a 4g backup Internet connection, that is the same… its great for when I’m away, I have a couple of VMs running Tailscale that route specifically through this… in addition, I have some smart plugs that connect through it, that allow me to power cycle my main router and servers.

I honestly don’t get this… if they wanted to backdoor something, it won’t be an OSS app, where the code is accessible to every-person and their dog.

Then on top of this, they basically have access to all you’re home network with IOT devices (and every other piece of electronics produced there), in addition to all your kids phones (assuming you have some) via TikTok etc…

There is some quality OSS coming from China, and this will increase… and it should be promoted… the more the merrier!

Depends what your after … I used to roll my own storage servers, but had a constant fight with either something going or performance issues - I then purchased a NAS as an experiment, and never looked back.

Personally, I say look at what else is out there, you have a couple of other vendors on the market, including ASUSTOR and TerraMaster… from experience, If you want cheap, an efficient… look at the ARM-based models, but they’d still run rings around something 12-13 years old.

I’d say steer clear of QNAP, they’ve been having a bad few years with regards to vulnerabilities, the other issue this causes is almost weekly critical firmware updates, which requires a reboot (not an issue for many… but intolerable when it’s providing NFS for my ESXi and K8S hosts).

On the i7, you could give TrueNAS a try… but I’d suggest you wouldn’t want to run that long term, as it wont be anywhere near as powerful or efficient as the latest 2-3 generations… even an entry level i3 N305 has 8 cores these days - and it’d be a PITA to get it setup, only to discover you need to replace it in 6-12 months…

Which ever way you go, see this as an investment… which I suspect, you already treat it as, especially since you’ve done so well from your old machines (call me impressed)