I am looking for a NAS that has good security. I mean, the least likely to lose info if a failure happens. I don't know how else to explain it. Also, I want one that is easy for someone to access when not at home. For instance, I have some things I want to download to the NAS when I am on vacation or away from home. I don't need much more space than 8TB but if I'm not mistaken I should have at least 4 hard drives to be able to get the least chance of failure, if that makes sense.
Sorry, if this sounds crazy but I hope it makes sense. Thanks.
What you're asking for is a device with a high degree of availability. If you also want it dependable, you should be looking for a NAS with at least 4 drive bays (not recommended for your needs) and preferably 8 drive bays or higher (depending on your budget).
The first two drive bays will be the NAS' os and configured in RAID1. This will allow a hdd to fail and you will still have access to the data and the NAS. The rest of the drive bays should be setup in an RAID5/6/10 array or similar. This will protect the data from hardware failures. For all of these drives, I would suggest the same type and size hdd (WD RED 3TB). With at least a few kept as spares (with a 6 hdd NAS, I recommend at least 3 hdd' bought as 'extras').
The ability to access the NAS over the internet would be best accomplished by an VPN. While many products have the ability to be configured so that they are directly reachable over the internet, I would never expose a NAS to the world like that (be prepared to get hacked sooner, rather than later).
If you really want this setup to be as dependable as possible, you need to duplicate it with an identical NAS which you can then use to make backups of the main NAS to. And, when/if the need arises, you can swap the backup NAS for the main NAS and continue to access your data without much delay.
All the network equipment should ideally also be on UPS' too, of course. And an additional backup taken on a timely schedule that ideally should be kept off site when it is not being used to do a backup to.
The above is a quick overview of what you should be considering depending on how important access to the data is to you.
You can scale it up or scale it down.
And the statement by Tim that more drives equal more failures is usually only true of RAID0 arrays. Almost any other RAID array that offers redundancy will give you a more robust storage option.
I would recommend QNAP (or Synology) myself. Any other NAS product is woefully below those two if you want the highest security, performance and reliability possible.
