New to Local Hosted Cloud - Need a little direction

[Turno6]

Hey guys! This is my first time on the forum so forgive me if I put this in the wrong place. Basically I am a photographer videographer and I used to just do file management on my one custom built pc that had a 1tb nvme ssd and a 4tb hdd to the back for archival storage, however 2 things happened over the past 3 ish years. 1, I have since purchased a second computer, a laptop, a macbook, an ipad, and inherited an old prebuilt dell from a relative. )The macbook and 2nd computer have been added more recently, so I havent needed a purpose to purchase a new nas to run my storage off of, as the one computer sufficed and then any projects I would upload to my google drive. 

 

As time has gone on, Ive thought about taking the sleeping machine back on another few trips around the sun while in high school to manage my files. I currently opperate a wix webpage for my photography, but I would like to be able to use the feature of connecting over the internet to the wix webpage. (I have a little bit of experience with java so I can figure out some way for the data to access an application on the computer eventually) but in the meantime it would be nice to just have the portable access to where if Im on my home network I can port into that computer and have it upload and download files as needed, so after a big photography trip I can upload all my photos from my mac while upstairs and then sort through them at a later date.

 

Looking into it, I found a few different options for me. I could purchase a new 4-drive g-technology for myself and connect that to my computer, or I can (for much cheaper) purchase a drive bay with some p-cie - sata adapters and connect the bay to the board that way. It wouldnt be able to run raid, but honestly other than the main hard drive that the computer boots off of its all going to be archival storage with not much going on there. Either way, I would like to just have this setup in my basement off my desk constantly running to where all I would need to have is a monitor so I can watch as my files are preserved for however long the ssd's last. 

 

Either way. Im looking for sudgestions on how you would run this system. Is there an application that could be cheap or free that either boots on linux or windows that I can then turn into my controller for the drives, or is there some service (Like google drive) that I can pay a few bucks a year for the software to local host my data. I can follow up with photos once I am at my house after school today (Gotta love the college experience) Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I would like to quickly mention that yes, I have watched linus's videos on turning your old pc into a server, but most of them are from a few years back and the companies that (potentially) were free back then have started charging an arm and a leg for their software, that is subscription based.

 

Amazon links to what I would purchase if I were to build my own enclosure:

Rack Drive Bays

Sata Port Potential 1

Sata Port Potential 2

Sata Port Potential 3

[Nayr438]

I would use OpenZFS for storage, a common option for this is TruNAS.

Probably go for a RAIDZ2 setup which would leave room for 2 drives to potentially fail without losing your data.

 

If you want something similar to Google Drive, you could run something like OwnCloud Infinite Scale or NextCloud.

Since your mostly storing Photos, I will also mention PhotoPrism.

Edited March 11 by Nayr438
Fix nextcloud link