A RAID 5 or 6 for Mylio Photo Vault for 36 -45 TB image files

[Enquiries]

I need to know what drives and drive enclosure is the simplest and most reliable for an 81 year old retired MD Ph.D who is fully alert and functioning but zero experience in command line instructions , although I could to simple tasks if I was told to do so.

I am expert in Photoshopand other photography software & need to consolidate 30 years of files - 40 drives ranging:
0.5 TB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB.

The 8, 10, 12 & 18 TB HD have been mostly invested by linkage in a Mylio catalog on a MacBook Pro M1Max with a 2TB drive and 32 GB RAM. Each generation of hard drives likely contains 60-100% of previously used smaller hard drives. So it could be that once the current bunch of 8, 10, 12 and 18 TB drives are logged into the MacBook Pro Mylio catalog by a list of links to those drives, then I can instruct Mylio to copy ALL those files to the RAID (that I plan to create with your advice), and simultaneously, Mylio will deduplicate and I should end up a one copy of each image

[ed]

Thank you for your support, this helps us.
Mylio have picked Synology to represent a NAS vault on their site. But other brands would also work.
Once you map the drive you will be able to use NAS similar to your USB or SATA drives https://kb.synology.com/en-nz/DSM/tutori...nology_NAS
I would recommend ds920+ or DS923+ as a four-bay option. But you can also go for ds1821+ and leave few bays empty to expand the storage space. Synology also allow different-size drive mixing which is helpful for expansion.
Synology also have their own Photo organising app. But features like deduplication and photo editing are missing. Otherwise, you also get face recognition and GEO filter https://www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/feature/photos
Either way, 3 drives or more will allow RAID5 (SHR for drive mixing later on) and four drives+ will allow RAID6 (SHR2 for drive mixing).
Synology will be easy to connect to and manage, including when you are away from home. You can also do additional things like backups and media streaming and much more.


I hope this helps. Thanks again.