You might want to look at DIY NAS running on FreeNAS with the following benefits:

1) Recycle and repurpose your old hardware
2) ZFS is a business class storage system
3) Can use it to host your personal cloud system such as Owncloud or Nextcloud
4) RAIDZ is better than conventional RAID. You do not need any RAID hardware card to run, just let FreeNAS OS manage your zpools. During any hardware failure, just replace the parts like a normal computer.
5) OS is free of charge
6) Has all the function compared to OTS NAS, and more
7) You get to choose the hardware specs and tune the NAS to your liking
8) Mature NAS OS system with regular updates and patches
9) Nice interface and dashboard

I'm on an asustor as20something TE. It works but I think its a low end model so opening files is kinda slow. But its been running 3 or 4 years np. So there's that.
So I've been researching for an upgrade. And will probably get a Synology. Between Synology and qnap, Synology has better software, qnap has better hardware.

Suggest you go for a ds920+ (just announced). Has all the specs and support for everything up to VM. So will be overkill specs for filesharing. I dunno, I need to make sure I dun get anything slow or laggy. Use 2bay first and add hdd later when you need. Synology hybrid raid will allow adding hdd of different sizes in the future.
Cheaper option is ds420+ with the same software and shr but no esata extendability (+5bays) that the 920+ has. Also a good option. But the present 418 and 918 pricing not very far.
Dunno much about qnap. Stopped looking after the reviewer said Synology is the Apple of NAS. I just want something I set up once and it just works.

Thanks to all for the responses.

Just wondering what filesystem are these running?

On my previous Dllink DNS 323, it ran a simple exFAT so when the unit died, I could retrieve all the data from the drives easily. It was a matter of running the exFAT utility and copying all the files out.

Im assuming if you don't run any encryption on it.

So far looks like users like Synology, but from my own research so far, Asustor seems to have the best specs for the money... At least on paper.
So do I go with the cheaper box, and spend more on better drives like the Seagate ironwolf drives or better box with cheaper Seagate barracudas.

Thanks

Yeah, I would do that if I still have time to muck around. Used to muck with freeNAS to go with entire enterprise setup.
(used to dump scheduled backups and temp storage for test virtual machines)

Looking for something plug and play so someone else can maintain it

To be honest I have been out of IT for more than a decade. Used to be a sysadmin for a listed company group. Just polling for consumer/SME grade stuff that is plug and play for small operation.

You do know what xpenology is, right?synology DSM with pc hardware

Asustor got better hardware than Synology for same price. Synology got more polished software. Some Synology model got M.2 slots for cache does seem like better option for plenty users that will read/write a lot small files, unless you want to use SSD instead of HDD. Both brands support BTRFS filesystem with snapshot, this will help against bit-rot and roll back to previously saved file version.

You don't want to go for Barracuda with NAS, it's not designed for usage 24/7 on NAS and with recent exposure that some Barracuda drive using SMR the more reason to avoid it.

I'm using Asustor, so far it is stable and connection speed is fast. Never use Synology so I don't know the pros and cons between these 2 brands.

Looks like the case. Getting the IronWolf drives seems logical.

If my budget was healthier, I would definitely be looking at mid to higher range Synology 4 bay (RAID5+hot spare) with M.2 cache. Would really speed things up and with better redundancy. Perhaps a later upgrade. Right now most of my performance is limited to my digi upstream anyway. There is only 3 office staff that would be using the fileserver (accounts, admin, and operation assistant) so it would be light load. 5 more sales staff that will only log in to update reports or download updated references infrequently. Like I said, I don't expect to see more than 5 concurrent users...hardly enterprise level requirements.

Back then, as syadmin my annual IT budget is 100k +. Own SME is very different, have to really pinch pennies ..hahahahaha