I have Googled and YouTubed and read all through this subreddit and cannot for the life of me figure out the right direction to go in for mass data management. I’m completely new to all the systems of NAS/DAS, RAID, etc., so please bear with me.

I am a freelance photographer and videographer with 30TB of files stored on regular Seagate portable HDDs (with duplicates). I edit on portable SSDs, and once the project is done, I transfer to the HDDs for long term archiving.

The assortment of HDDs is clunky and chaotic and they are slow for transferring data. I’m looking for a more sophisticated workflow for access, archive, and backup.

Things to note and my questions:

  • I am accumulating 5-10TB of new files to store annually.
  • I work alone, and don’t have a strong need to access my files from everywhere. NAS feels like an overkill, but it seems to be what everyone online is talking about. Is there something I am missing here?
  • A DAS RAID setup (like Thunderbay?) seems like a better fit for me if I don’t need network access. But from what I’ve learned, a RAID is not a backup. I would still need another physical copy of all files elsewhere. What do people with Thunderbays back up to? Another Thunderbay that they put somewhere else?
  • Something I hate about my current HDDs is it takes many hours to transfer large amounts of data. I would like faster read/write capabilities. Anyone have thoughts on using a RAID with SSDs vs HDDs?
  • Once RAID storage is full, can I completely remove and store all drives, and start a new RAID with fresh drives for new incoming files? I’m really looking for easy access to my last 1-2 years of files, so once something is old enough, I don’t care about it sitting in a Thunderbay vs. a box, if that makes sense. If I wanted to access older RAID storage, can I remove all current drives and put the old ones back in? Is this chaotic??
  • Instead of a RAID setup, would it just be easier to get some giant capacity external HDDs (like a 20TB G Drive) and copy things twice? I don’t really understand the difference between RAID 1 in a Thunderbay (or similar) and what I’m doing now: buying two hard drives and copying the same thing to both (except that the RAID mirrors automatically).
  • I am planning to use Backblaze for a cloud solution once I figure out my new physical solution.

Would love to keep the budget to $2000 for physical storage but I understand it gets expensive quickly and it’s important for me to invest in the right system once than the wrong one multiple times. Open to all ideas.

Thanks for any insight!!