Port forwarding will work, but it has major downsides

1. Will draw attention of bots
2. Secure as long as there are no security holes in openssh (which is rare but has happened)
3. You _must_ harden the ssh server by disabling password auth, putting behind fail2ban

There are far better and safer alternatives that I would recommend over exposing a raw port to the world.

1. Tailscale
2. Wireguard/OpenVPN

Use Samba.

If you want a GUI for samba on ubuntu checkout

- casaos

- open media vault

CasaOS is about as easy as it gets.

curl -fsSL https://get.casaos.io | sudo bash  

It provides a gui front end for docker. You can install it on any debian based system (which mint is). Combine that with the portainer app and there isn’t much you can’t do.

All the major NAS brands have a google cloud sync (synology/QNAP/asusstor/casaos)

Owncloud/Nextcloud have a google drive sync plugin

You could use something like rsync to copy to another cloud or drive.

1. You could add more with a usb/thunderbolt/sas jbod expansion.

2. Buy a bigger unit, transfer the drives and sell the old one

3. Clustering/hyperconverged with truenas or ceph

Something like this?

Obviously this is make for ripping DVD/Blu-Rays, but combined with software like Automatic Ripping Machine, I feel confident that you could automate 90% of this. (Still would need to put disks in, and rename any folders that were created).

Based on the fact that you are dealing with medical files, you likely have HIPPA hoops to jump through, so using a unmanaged second computer might be out of the question. (As an it administrator I would not allow a raspberry pi or similar access to the VPN/Network). You may have luck asking IT for a second computer (that they control), and then do the USB drive option.

Assuming you have unlimited power and noise tolerance

I would start with a used dell 720xd for $350 and then fill it up with drives. If you need more add jbods

CasaOS can mix and match, but it uses mergerFS which doesn’t have the same parity as ZFS/ceph/raid.

Im also a big fan of CasaOS and run it. You should also check out ZimaOS alpha release as it has more raid functionality.

ZFS needs roughly 1GB of ram per TB of storage.

Truenas code is older and runs on BSD. 99% of people will want to run Scale.

Unraid- if your drives are different sizes. Truenas - if you have lots of ram and like ZFS. CasaOs - If you like pretty things. Proxmox + Open Media Vault - If you want to run vms.

Completely False? No known 3.5 external that isn’t normal inside?

You sure about that?

What about these drives that have a USB interface instead of SATA.

If you want a beautiful front end for docker containers

CasaOS/ZimaOS Cosmos-server Unbrel

Otherwise

• proxmox
• truenas
• unraid

What’s your intended workload? This sounds good for just archival, but not for anything performant. What are you doing for parity drive?

That article is confusing. They claim you don’t need to worry, then they drop a sentence like this.

Even a worn-out SSD would still go a year without data loss, according to the original presentation, and that’s while being stored at 87 degrees Fahreneit the entire time

So which is it? If I have a SSD in a drawer I sure hope it will last more than 1 year.

Casaos is new. It is pretty similar to portainer. It is still a pretty frontend for debian targeted twards tinkerers.

The end goal is for ZimaOS to replace/supliment CasaOS which is intended to be a more direct competitor to Synology/QNAP software. ZimaOS will be the OS released on their ZimaCube Kickstarter

As others have mentioned there are competitors like Cosmos-server and Umbrel. CasaOS/ZimaOS has a pretty strong company behind it, so the chances it gets abandoned are low. Cosmos and Umbrel are more of a hobby of a few people that may or may not be around 5 years from now.