Welcome to FreeNAS Forums!
Electrical Engineer, I can relate. As for your storage of photos and data, please ensure that you also back this valuable data because something can happen to your data even while on the best server in the world, oh that server would be FreeNAS of course. I backup my photos to DVD media periodically and the other data that I consider important as well.
I hope your experience with the FreeNAS system and the forums is pleasant.