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First of all RAID is not a backup! It only protects against drive failure. If there is a fire you loose it all, if there is drive corruption or an accidental deletion of files, that is mirrored across the RAID array. Also it is possible to set up both a raid 5 array and a RAID 0 array. If I were you I would use something like SnapRAID with MergerFS to set this up. I would put your /boot/, /, and maybe your /home/ directories on that m.2 and just set up a /media/ partition for your plex media and softlink it to your /home/. Same goes for the File storage/backup partition. As for OS I personally use a headless Debian install with a bunch of docker containers. linuxserver.io has a nextcloud and plex container which may fit your needs. If the command line scares you and you don't want to learn it (it's really not that bad once you get used to it) you could use OpenMediaVault or something like UnRaid which will give you a gui that you can set things up like new drives later on without learning how to use SnapRAID and MergerFS. I started out with OMV but switched away bc I could do more with just a headless machine instead of being forced into what the GUI wanted to let me do.