Dyaets

I guess if you don't need more than 4TB (at least at this point), two SSDs would be a better option. You can always get an external HDD just for storage capacity.

Agree on this. In most cases I have seen, RAID 0 on NVMe drives is indeed used just to combine those in a single volume.

Ouch, 400 pounds is definitely not cheap. This can be a fir for an enterprise though with a server chassis packed with U.2 NVMe drives. However, I have to agree with you, hardware RAID is getting used more rarely.

Your plan sounds solid to me. Just get the larger M.2 for editing. Also, for backups, I would recommend following the 3-2-1 rule as @Action_Johnson mentioned. If you don't like NAS or cloud, you could use an external HDD or even two (with one stored offsite) plus Blu-Rays for archival. Here is also a good article on backup storage media and their pros and cons: https://www.hyper-v.io/keep-backups-lets-talk-backup-storage-media/

Ahh, got you! I haven't seen those yet. Still, good info. Thank you!

Yep, clean it every month.

I agree on software RAID for NVMe drives but are there any real hardware RAID controllers that can collect NVMe? I mean, not RAID on chip. It's just I have never seen such.

I would first recommend going with 3-2-1 rule for backups with several different media holding several backup copies. Here is some good reading on different backup media pros and cons: https://www.hyper-v.io/keep-backups-lets-talk-backup-storage-media/. In that way, you can use your old hard drive plus a new one (preferably offsite) or cloud. You can start with your old hard drive but I wouldn't trust it completely.

Huh! Yep, you just hit the spot of painful tech realizations

Looks like a normal price to me they are typically around $230 on Amazon.

Totally agree on this.

Just as already mentioned, if you want speed from NVMe and you are fine with losing everything if a single drive fails and restoring from backups, just go with RAID 0. With any other RAID level you will use write speed. Depending on the OS, Storage Spaces for Windows or MDADM for Linux should do the job. Also, just in case here is some useful reading on different RAID levels pros and cons: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/back-to-basics-raid-types

If you are already familiar with Windows, continue with it.

That's a solid advice. Totally agree on this.

If you don't have any other reasoning except you want a gaming PC, I believe it will be hard to convince them. Why don't you just try discuss this all with them and try to find some way that would be acceptable for all of you? Like use it for gaming for some limited time, rest- for learning.