“The server itself cost $531, and I bought four disks for $732, bringing the total cost to $1,263.”
That is about what an off-the-shelf storage box costs, with more power and full control. ZFS handles the redundancy, and TrueNAS runs it for free. The trade is your weekend and your own troubleshooting. For 8.5 TB of photos and 20 years of email, owning the hardware beats renting someone’s cloud.