Home Mass Storage Options

I am a digital artist and have Tb's of images, zip files and software that I am interested in saving or backing up to a mass storage device.

I currently have:

• 9 - 1tb External hard drives
• 1 - 8tb External hard drive

...almost full and would like to 'consolidate' onto a stable single device, server, or something.

My current computer stats are as follows:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) Service Pack1 (build 7601)
• 3.70 Ghz Intel Core 17-4820K
• 32 Kb (primary memory cache)
• 10240 Kb (tertiary memory cache)
• Multi-core (4 total)
• Hyper-thread (8 total)
• Gigabyte Tech X79-UP4 MBoard
• 100 Megahertz Bus Clock
• 2 internal hard drives
  • SanDisk SSD U110 128GB (126.04 GB)
  • TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 [Hard drive] (2000.40 GB)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
• Intel(R) C600 series chipset SATA AHCI Controller
  
• Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller (3x)
• Fresco Logic xHCI (USB3) Controller FL1009 Series (2x)
• Fresco Logic xHCI (USB3) Root Hub (2x)
• Intel(R) C600/X79 series chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller #1 - 1D26
• Intel(R) C600/X79 series chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller #2 - 1D2D

I am not particularly computer savvy...no rookie but the technical stuff trips me up, so any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

I looked up some stuff on-line and saw a
NETGEAR ReadyNAS RN422 2 Bay Diskless High Performance NAS, 20TB Capacity Network Attached Storage, Intel 1.5GHz Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, RN42200-100NES
...but was not sure whether 1) this is something I can run or use with my PC and 2) if it is even the right direction.

 

NAS is preferably connected to your router. More preferably, hardwired via a LAN port.

Also, that model is "naked", i.e. it doesn't come with any hard drives.

 

Are there other options that would link directly to my tower?

 

Google USB RAID enclosure if you want it connected to your computer directly. Most you can set up a RAID or just set it as a JBOD (JBOD gives you all disk space because there is no backup/parity) .
The thing is you'd need clean drives to start, you can't put your drives with all the data in these cases, it will reformat them. 2TB drives are cheap now. RAID will help if you have a drive that dies if it is setup correctly (read up on RAID) it will rebuild the drive that failed. http://www.cooldrives.com/index.php/usb3-raidbox-external-lcd.html
If you find just a USB 3.0 enclosure without RAID you could just put your current drives in it.
Search Amazon for 8 bay USB 3.0 enclosure
I

 

Thank you foogoo, your direction has been very helpful and cleared up somethings for me. Still need to read up on RAID a little more but this is an excellent start!