prongs1982

Although pretty much any storage drive would work, it is recommended to use NAS/RAID-class drives such as WD Red. Such drives have features that enable them to work much safer and smoother with lower chance of dropping out or corrupting the data and thus lowering the chance of data loss. An example of such attribute would be TLER. Here's more info on WD Red and NAS/RAID drives: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=xsLAjh   Having said that, I've seen people using WD Green drives in RAID1 for years without complaints, WD Black drives in RAID0 NAS devices without problems and even WD Blue drives connected to a router with enclosures acting like a NAS. It would work, but you are increasing your risk of a drive failure simply because these drives are not designed and thus not recommended for this by us.    To answer your question, WD Black should be the more robust drive as it is designed for extensive and heavier workloads and should be able to sustain more hostile environments and more demanding workloads better compared to WD Blue.   Hope this helps! Ask away if you need more info!   Captain_WD.

Your sshd is normal then. If you feel that doesn't convince you then go buy external drive and backup all of your data in the sshd. I hope you'll not feel paranoid again

Well then in that case a single machine still makes more sense. Just one UPS to keep it on, less total power needed.
 
Off-site backups are rarely of much use, but they are there for you to sleep at nights It's that worst case scenario that the building catches on fire or whatever. So you got your data, a local backup and an off-site backup. Like many IT pros say, "if your files aren't in 3 different places, they don't exist"

All in all I would recommend you to just use one NAS machine with two separate disks (or more in a raid config if you want performance), one for your Data and one to automatically back that up. Then regularly run an off-site backup on some disk that you don't keep inside the machine or even the same house/office.
 
edited to clarify.

What about spending less (at the cost of a little future proofing) to get more computer?
An HP Z800 workstation can be had for around $500, a pair of X5667 Xeons for under $80 (if you need to swap what came in it), and 48 GB of RDIMMs for about $100 on ebay. That would be a very competitive rendering machine.

I wouldn't go with an i7, I would go with a xeon with many cores and hyperthreading. They can't be overclocked, but if you're building the rig, it doesn't sound like she would be trying to overclock anyway. That would absolutely smash any 3d rendering performance, and depending on which one you buy, can easily fit your price range. Ill get back to you in a few minutes on a good model

E5 Xeon (the ones beginning with a 2 can be used on a dual-socket motherboard like an Asus Z10)
32-64 GB of ECC memory

Here is a good xeon: 8 core, 16 thread, 2.6 Ghz, 20 Mb l2 cache, lGA 2011 v3 (Same socket as the 5820k/5960x) Here's the link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117478