I just turned my old laptop into a NAS but it needs upgrades - Could you help find the right components ?

Hello everybody,

Sorry for my mistakes, English isn't my first language.

My goal is to do it as cheap as possible, I'll try to buy everything second hand if possible.

So, I just turned my old ASUS UX303L into a homeNAS, which works. I followed along this tutorial (not without hiccups, but I managed to debug just fine with ChatGPT).

The thing is, my old laptop needs upgrades:

• 500 GB HDD

• No ethernet port

• 8 GB of RAM

I mostly want a homeNAS to replace iCloud and maybe do a few other things:

• storing my notes, pictures, and videos and have access to them remotely

• setting up a PiHole

• Home Assistant stuff (thermostat, smart plugs and lightbulbs...)

• maybe setting up a torrent client (but I don't understand what it is yet, I'm really happy with Stremio on my computer)

So, from what I gathered, upgrading the RAM might not be really necessary for my use case, but I'm listening.

I haven't been able to open up my computer yet but from this video it looks like there are two M.2 slots with one being used by the wifi card (top right) and the other being empty (left).

I was thinking that I could replace the WiFi card with an Ethernet adapter but it would add the issue of making a hole the laptop's case.

What could I do with the other M.2 slot ?

So, with all of that, could you guys advise me on the components I should get to keep the budget as tight as possible?

Thanks in advance !