

Overall the marketing is dishonest/over promises and there’s some previous lack of transparency with data breaches along with being closed source. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordVPN#Criticism
There’s just better options: https://thatoneprivacysite.xyz/








My understanding is that hba cards support virtualization better than passing sata directly through. But if you’re not virtualizing the NAS, I wouldn’t see an issue with a reputable motherboard that has enough sata ports at 6 Gbps.
For the cheaper expansion cards I’d see that as a central point of failure and would recommend an hba card over a cheaper alternative.