In October I bought a barebones Intel NUC8i7 mini desktop PC (although it is a desktop, it uses a "laptop CPU) and installed
16Mb of double bank Crucial DIMM memory and a
1Tb Crucial M.2 SSD ($96 from Amazon). I used the Windows 10 license from my dead Toshiba laptop.
My new Gen 8 NUC is lightning fast - 15 seconds boot time, and Novabench scores it at about 25% faster than my older and MUCH BIGGER Lenovo M900 ThinkCentre desktop with an Intel Core i7 (Kaby Lake) CPU and a 1Tb Crucial 2.5" SATA SSD. I now use that Crucial SATA SSD to backup the NUC.
(I find it amazing to have such a powerful mini-PC that is about as small as my SMSL Q5 Pro desktop DAC/Amp that sits next to it. The compactness of my current computer and audio system is astounding to someone who became an audiophile in the last year of monaural vacuum-tube only audio (1958) and started using PC's with the original IBM PC in 1984.)
Unfortunately, intermittent freezing requiring a power-button hard reboot seems to be fairly common with NUCs, and my new NUC would freeze anywhere from a couple of times a day to a dozen times or more. With a 15 second reboot time and no problem restoring Firefox sessions, I put up with it. But this morning it was really bad, so I finally did a bit of Google searching, which indicated that it was likely graphics related. I used the Intel driver update utility, and it found a new graphics driver that was dated December 3. After installing the latest driver this morning, my NUC hasn't frozen once. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I found a long-term solution.
I have a older Celeron-based Intel NUC that I dual-boot to Daphile for audio, or to LibreElec/Kodi for video. Right now it's much faster that using my Synology to copy video files to a USB 3 flash drive and carry it 10 feet from my PC desk to the media center NUC. I watch and delete movies, but have a "permanent" music library that I maintain. All of my thousands of digital music files are on a Synology single-bay 4Tb NAS. But a typical NAS is far too complicated with way too many functions and extra apps for what I need.
So why not a simple "smart" ethernet-attached SDD? Apparently that is an idea that Toshiba is apparently developing - a NAS substitute without the bulk and complexity of a traditional NAS.
But for now, I will continue to use a USB 3 to SATA adapter (below) for sharing and moving files - much, much faster than reading from and writing to my NAS with its mechanical hard drives. The internal SATA 2.5 SSD drives are completely enclosed, the connector is recessed, and in a dry, clean environment, I don't see the need to be put them into an "external drive" enclosure. I simply treat them like big USB flash drives.