Marion,
> My question is: Would you recommend it as an
> everyday use NAS?
> Is it still powerful enough to host a a no-thrill
> NAS?
Yes, it is powerful enough for a home NAS.
> 2. What's the go to way to use it? OpenWRT? OMV?
> i'd prefer a GUI, if possible
You can run OMV, some users have documented this in the
Wiki thread.. Or run OpenWrt and use its builtin GUI.
If you run Debian with systemd, then you also can install GUI such as cockpit to manage it.
> 3. Is encryption possible? What solution would you
> recommend?
There was some report about disk
encryption issue (Marvell CESA support was removed in later kernel). Individual file encryption should be fine, but nobody has reported one way or another.
>
> I would mostly use it to host my private
> data(mostly photos) and want it to be a mostly, if
> possible, fire and forget solution(Debian updates
> excluded).
If the box is facing Internet, you'll need to update it regularly. But it's a home NAS only, and you only install software from Debian repo then it is OK to fire and forget.
-bodhi
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