My Desktop Bit the Dust, OSX, and the Storage Dilemma

My hackintosh Q6600 of over five and a half year finally decided to give up, with due to respect, it would have run alot longer, but I was pushing it hard to keep up with the demands of video and the like.  I remember the days when I was such a tinkering geek, always updating, replacing, building my own desktop machine.  And I would switch between Windows and Linux, until I finally was fed up with reinstalling Windows to keep my machine run fast.  Then, I put in OSX.  That really changed my thinking.  Reliability, stability, fast, easy to use.  What a concept!  Fast forward the four years I run OSX on my custom built desktop, I have recommended six Apple computers (mac mini/imacs/mbp) and not to mention, my very own macbook pro.  It just works.  So, what did I get?  I chose the Apple route versus the hassle of building my own.  As I get older, my time and time I spent with my family is more important than just sit and tinkering for hours and days on end.  And so, it was the most powerful machine I can afford, the latest 27" iMac for plenty of desktop space, 2GB of video for some Photoshop and FCPX rendering with Nvidia CUDA, and third party Crucial 32GB RAM.

I ran into a conundrum with my precious data. I have over 2TB of data and video, and plenty more to come as I capture those fleeting moments.  So I did some research.  USB3, Thunderbolt, NAS, RAID5, RAID1, RAID0, RAID10, DAS, Synology, OWC, LaCie, SSD, oh my, what information overload!  So this is what I have figured out so far.  A single Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD with a Seagate thunderbolt adapter functions as the main boot and apps drive.  A 4TB Seagate Backup Plus with a thunderbolt adapter as the main data drive.  Another 4TB Seagate unit in either USB3 or thunderbolt as a timemachine for backup.  What was stunning is the bootup time of under 10seconds with the external SSD thunderbolt.