wow thanks for all the feedback - this was very helpful and I hope I'll be able to apply many of this advice in my next iteration of my backup storage set-up.
Oh interesting I hadn’t considered this. I guess the only trouble would be if I am out with my laptop and I have no internet connection but this seems like a good tradeoff for simplicity
I agree I think one of the main things I learned from all this was that I should probably buy / set up a real NAS. I’ll look into zfs pool thanks for the comment!