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.

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