This is 32TB of disk with 24TB usable, and I've used 54% of the usable space... around 13TB.
I backup to a single external 12TB disk (which is now not enough, but I duplicate some of my files across SyncThing to other devices so I'm close to backup capacity but not yet at capacity).
I RAID for the purpose of not having to move and rebuild for the life of the disks I use... I've probably got couple of years in these ones.
I backup for the purpose of a fire or something dramatic taking out the house and disk storage... this is monthly as the data doesn't change at a really fast pace. I now store this off-site (at my partners place - upside they can use it to watch films directly from the HDD).
The most expensive components for me are always the NAS enclosure and the backup HDD (because a single large drive is always pricey and yet it makes performing the backup very easy).
I don't use Cloud backup for this stuff... the storage is cheap, but the network costs are not and the time to restore is painful (how fast is your internet connection?! add in how slow S3 Glacier is for read speed too!).
I don't over-invest in the RAID setup... it's not a miracle solution, if the RAID controller fails you've still lost everything. For me it's good enough to buy me time (a few weeks) from a single disk failure to have ensured the backup is up to date and to replace the bad drive. That's the only reason I have RAID6, so that I have time to be lazy after a first drive failure.
Now... for what you've described you can certainly purchase a 4-bay NAS and just do a RAID5 with 3 larger disks, add a 4th and expand the RAID later, and then also add in 1 single large disk for external backup.
But I guess the real question is: What's your budget?
My setup:
This is 32TB of disk with 24TB usable, and I've used 54% of the usable space... around 13TB.
I backup to a single external 12TB disk (which is now not enough, but I duplicate some of my files across SyncThing to other devices so I'm close to backup capacity but not yet at capacity).
Basically... I make my storage from lots of small, cheap drives with very high reliability according to the BackBlaze HDD survey ... this is their latest https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q3-2020/
I RAID for the purpose of not having to move and rebuild for the life of the disks I use... I've probably got couple of years in these ones.
I backup for the purpose of a fire or something dramatic taking out the house and disk storage... this is monthly as the data doesn't change at a really fast pace. I now store this off-site (at my partners place - upside they can use it to watch films directly from the HDD).
The most expensive components for me are always the NAS enclosure and the backup HDD (because a single large drive is always pricey and yet it makes performing the backup very easy).
I don't use Cloud backup for this stuff... the storage is cheap, but the network costs are not and the time to restore is painful (how fast is your internet connection?! add in how slow S3 Glacier is for read speed too!).
I don't over-invest in the RAID setup... it's not a miracle solution, if the RAID controller fails you've still lost everything. For me it's good enough to buy me time (a few weeks) from a single disk failure to have ensured the backup is up to date and to replace the bad drive. That's the only reason I have RAID6, so that I have time to be lazy after a first drive failure.
Now... for what you've described you can certainly purchase a 4-bay NAS and just do a RAID5 with 3 larger disks, add a 4th and expand the RAID later, and then also add in 1 single large disk for external backup.
But I guess the real question is: What's your budget?