[Advice Needed] Very budget storage solution

Hello all!

At the beginning of the year I started my homelab (minilab) journey.

I had a 2TB portable HDD lying about which I’ve used as storage connected to my mini pc.

My first issue is that it’s exFAT formatted, which makes using permissions in Linux a real pain. My second issue, I’ve got like 150GB left.

I’m looking for advice on the best whilst cheapest way to expand my storage, not including HDD prices.

I want storage with RAID1. I was thinking of buying the cheapest (but not Synology) 2 bay NAS enclosure I could find on eBay, then populating it with 2 8TB drives.

Is a NAS enclosure like that the best option if I want storage with RAID configs, or am I best looking for Direct Attached/RAID enclosure? In my instance of not wanting server software on it, does brand and year really matter?

Thank you.