This seems like a half-solution - I can understand building a big box locally for day-to-day access to the images (if they indeed need that) but I didn't see an

This seems like a half-solution - I can understand building a big box locally for day-to-day access to the images (if they indeed need that) but I didn't see any mention of an off-site backup. Even assuming no problems like file corruption, what happens if there's a fire or flood? At the least, there should be two copies of this big box, in different places.