I have always wanted one of these for my home computer but they are so incredibly expensive the setup does not justify the cost. I ended up turning an old Lian-Li V1000 mini tower into a file server with 8 hard drives instead. I wish there was a cheaper alternative for home use that wasn't a water down 3 or 4 drive system that are still to expensive for what they are.

I have always wanted one of these for my home computer but they are so incredibly expensive the setup does not justify the cost. I ended up turning an old Lian-Li V1000 mini tower into a file server with 8 hard drives instead. I wish there was a cheaper alternative for home use that wasn't a water down 3 or 4 drive system that are still to expensive for what they are.

What is your "mini-tower"? Be careful that at 24/7 what you save on capital costs you lose on cost of electricity. If the RS815+ is too expensive, try the RS214 (possibly replaced soon by a RS215 - ask the PR department). Depending on usage and capacity requirements consider using 2.5" drives... much lower power consumption, and for home use, more than fast enough. Compare a typical 100W old PC turned into fileserver with a 20W dedicated NAS/Rackstation. 20W NAS x 24/7/52= 175kWh per year. At EUR 0,15 per kWh, that is EUR 26 per year for the electricity 100W PC fileserver x 24/7/52 = 875kWh per year. At EUR 0,15 per kWh, that is EUR 131. Costing is based on average EU electricity costs in 2014. Some countries have higher costs. So you save EUR 105 per year on electricity alone, you have a modern system, you have all the software and functionality of Synology DiskStation Manager. You also have a much more streamlined installation (no need to install Linux or Windows and do lots of configuration), and also firmware/software updates are handled very easily. You get RAID out the box. You are going to save at least 10 hrs of setup and maintenance time. I'd value that at about EUR 100 for a home user. So, it has paid for itself in just over 3 years. Do it. This thing will also sync with another synology or another PC if you want to. Private cloud. Private offline backup at another location. You just CANT do that easily with Linux or Windows without a lot of work, headaches and compromises. So, do it again, for the redundancy.