Thermite

Their documentation may be out of date. Try contact their support and ask them for advice on how to proceed. I've had to do that with no-ip before when I wanted to get a wildcard certificate from Let's Encrypt, and they helped me within the same day. Hopefully, get.tech will be able to assist you as well.

There are two ways you can go about writing the rules.. since pfsense is match first. You can allow all and deny specific, or deny all allow specific.
 
Sure thing, I know PF.. but pfsense eh.. little less so.

As much as i'd love to do that the NAS in the household i'm in is a much simpler option or i'd have just done the shuttle pc

FreeNAS is good especially if you plan to never need any more storage than you originally buy. If you need expand ability for storage you should use unRAID. If I were you I would use unRAID damn thing just works is much simpler than freeNAS and has just as good forum support. UnRAID isn’t free though they have different license levels and it is a one time fee. You own a license forever once you buy it. UnRAID boots off of USB so you can use your ssd as a write cache.
 
For hardware you should probably get an older Xeon CPU and supermicro motherboard that has enough SATA ports for the amount of drives you need. If you need more dries there are tons of HBA’s (host bus adapters) for sale online. GET ECC MEMORY “save yourself” there is a reason people use it. If you buy smart this doesn’t have to be expensive. Use eBay and make sure you buy validated parts otherwise it may not be compatible. There are validated parts listings on supermicro’s site for memory and cpu’s.

Your hard drive is probably dying and is going to die soon. I would backup that drive just incase it dies. Good luck!

Thanks for the personal insults and whatnot!
 
Anyways, the pictures i take already has 3 backups(a couple of big eHDD's and a cold storage pc), this is not an issue, there's no need for you to debate this. The issue is i need to get rid of the ~100 flash drives i have on my hands aswell as get a better way of accessing these images and videos without having to (FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING) dig through a mountain of flash drives or take a 1 hr drive to my summerplace where my cold pc is, or plug in 6 different external HDD's trying to find what i'm looking for.
 
Enough of that.
The 45drives option seems appealing, but very very costly, i was able to push the price just below 4k by dropping phone support and pre-installation.
Also, what is Unraid? I have heard it mentioned but never really had an explanation of it.
 
The NAS thing is pretty much a no-go. I need to be able to double it as a render offloading machine. 
 
Looking out for more suggestions!

Watch one of those "how to build a computers in 2018" videos. Some are made by Linus, some by Austin Evans. Also, good luck finding a good gpu. 

Yes, you'll be able to as long as they're on the same subnet.

Thank you, I haven't built the apparatus yet, but I'm going with 64gb of ECC DDR4, and a Supermicro motherboard. I'm trying to do things by the book so I have as few surprises as possible. 

Are you serious?  ONE IS TOO MANY!!!! Why people still smoke is beyond me.  Setting lung cancer aside, it's just horrible for the rest of your body.

The very first one you smoked.

Welcome to the world of forced upgrades, where companies can take features away from your computer and sell them to you again.
That Microsoft's behavior is acceptable is mind blowing to me. They should be sued the living crap out of.

S = Stripped
 
Dont forget that they took RTFS support away from the Windows 10 Pro with an "update" (more like downgrade) and then they made Windows 10 Pro for Workstations with RTFS support.

Yes, but for those grandma's that go to buy a laptop and end up with windows 10 S and can't install their favorite picture sorting application its going to be an issue. And since its their issue its yours because your the resident tech guy who gets called out for all the stupid shit. Now you have to tell your grandma that she bought the wrong version of windows when she didn't even know there was more than one version and she has to pay $50 dollars on top of the $400 she already spent on the laptop. Its not a problem for us its a problem for everyone else who isn't aware.
 
This wouldn't be a problem if the Microsoft store actually had useful apps, but it doesn't. They need to partner first with developers and make good apps then ask people to buy their windows 10 S.

Yes, but for those grandma's that go to buy a laptop and end up with windows 10 S and can't install their favorite picture sorting application its going to be an issue. And since its their issue its yours because your the resident tech guy who gets called out for all the stupid shit. Now you have to tell your grandma that she bought the wrong version of windows when she didn't even know there was more than one version and she has to pay $50 dollars on top of the $400 she already spent on the laptop. Its not a problem for us its a problem for everyone else who isn't aware.
 
This wouldn't be a problem if the Microsoft store actually had useful apps, but it doesn't. They need to partner first with developers and make good apps then ask people to buy their windows 10 S.

Fist off thanks for all the input really appreciate it everyone. Now I ended up going with the HighPoint card. I did this because I know that in the future I’m planning to switch to a much higher capacity enclosure once my data needs exceed 20 drives.
 
Also I didn’t know intel made their own sas expanders so that’s cool and I’ll probably look into their products for HBAs in the future.
 
Unfortunately, your right if this card decides to die unexpectedly then the whole array goes down but I don’t see this as much of a problem because if I split all the drives between even to HBAs I’m still going to have to take the server offline to replace it.

Personally I don't like HighPoint, not for any specific reason but I just like to stick with server gear that I use daily. Plus I'd rather get 2 or 3 LSI based HBA than have everything on a single HBA because if that were to fail the whole system would go down, rare but something to think about.
 
I'd just go with two 9211/H310, cheaper and supports 32 disks and the case in question only has 20.

@AshleyAshes, you are totally right but I had a ray of hope that the drive will be repaired. That's why I wanted to repair it even if it contained backups. You are totally right that I should not repair it at all. That's why I have not gone further.
@Thermite I am slowly shifting to the SSD scene. I replaced my laptop hard drive with an SSD and my goal is to be free of any mechanical drives wherever possible. My next shopping will be of course the portable SSD you recommended. I have had my eyes on the T3 for a while but the T5 looks nice. I have even heard a lot about the WD portable SSD.

@SC2Mitch I’m most excited for the drone ship landing. I don’t exactly know why they would use the ship when they could land on land which is going to be much more stable. Any idea why they are doing that?

Yes

Makes sense thanks. @SC2Mitch @knightslugger

it's literally impossible to bring it all the way back to land and it's running low on fuel itself so a drone ship is safer and more economical. 
 
Ah, that's very true. 

the downrange distance makes a return to land for the center core impossible. It's not different than GTO injection orbits.

How many extensions do you have? and What are they?

Because money. Also might have something to do with specific tolerances the thermal paste has to meet for the company to believe it is going to work for the full lifespan of the chip.