I know USB drives work well enough for most people, but I had never-ending issues when I was first trying to set up my media server. All of my problems went away once I connected my drives internally. Well, not all of my problems, just my hard drive related ones. :)

What is the brand / model of the mini PC you’re using?

If you aren’t using both of the NVME slots, you can get an adapter to clip into those slots that has SATA ports on it. I’m using a SilverStone ECS07, I’ve also used a smaller one from IO Crest to give me two SATA ports on an SBC based media server that I was running for eight or so years before outgrowing it.

If you have 2x SATA SSD connections available, you should be able to connect 2.5 inch SATA HDDs to them without problems. 3.5 inch drives need 12 volt and 5 volt, whereas 2.5 inch drives get away with only needing 5V. It’s likely that your mini PC hasn’t ever thought about powering extra drives, so you may need to sort out a power supply for the extra drives. I have a tiny little power supply that I harvested out of an mITX case many years ago that I use to power the drives, and the power supply for the mini PC just powers the mini PC.

Can’t help in regards to using Amazon, but some of the Lenovo Minis have an m.2 slot on the underside, as well as the 2.5 drive in the top. I think the M920q and some others have two m.2 slots.

If you want maximum jank, you can split the m.2 into 5 SATA ports, then leave the bottom panel off and to connect to drives in your drive bay. That’s what I’ve done. You’ll need a separate power supply for the drives, though.

You should be able to block it.

There are some Lenovo minis with Quadro GPUs in them as well. Would be handy for transcodes, if that’s something you require for Jellyfin.

Yes.

No drawbacks for my use case, but there are a few quirks.

Some apps that I’ve dabbled with might show vertically, but most of the Android TV compatible apps were fine.

Some apps seem to expect a touchscreen input, and don’t really show what’s highlighted or selected very well, so navigating with just a TV style remote control can be tricky. I have a mouse and keyboard that I also use, definitely the easiest option.

Lastly, the Shield is a pretty powerful device, so I always kinda feel like I’m not using it to its fullest potential. I haven’t really tried any gaming with it, I don’t use it as a media server or anything, just a simple stream box. That’s less of a quirk with the device itself, and more an issue with me feeling like I should be putting it to better use.

Happy to answer any other questions you may have!

I have an Nvidia Shield running LineageOS.

The setup process wasn’t too bad, but the Shield might be more money than you want to spend.

I use it for Netflix and Plex, as well as Spotify, with no problems. It tells me that Netflix is not optimised for the device, but plays fine. I’ve heard that Netflix may limit it to 720p, but the quality is as good as you can expect from Netflix anyway.

Plex works perfectly, can stream 4k from my media server with no issues. I will eventually transition to Jellyfin, once I convince the 4 other households that have access to my Plex library to sort themselves out.