Mine has some food control issues so I feed them 2-3 times a day wet food. Free fed or not she vomits every now and then, pretty sure cats just puke because I’ve never had one that doesn’t a few times a year. She cries if I forget to feed but other than the transition from free feeding she got used to the schedule in a few weeks.
Mine is more an exercise in if I could than if I should. I’m using a 1tb disc for os and cache with a thunderbolt, 4 disk jbod nvme enclosure for storage. If I was in need of more storage I’d probably go with a usb jbod ssd enclosure for power efficiency reasons but as is a bit less than 5tb has been fine for my needs.