[geeks] drive pooling...

[Shannon]

Anyone here do much with drive pooling systems versus traditional RAID?

I'm afraid of Drobo because of the failure stories, some local to me.

However, quite a few people have used Unraid and FlexRAID with good success. I
don't mind paying if its really nice.

I guess what I like about them would be:

	- if pool fails, you can read all the drives and data, with RAID/ZFS its
gone
	- you can add unequal drives to the array
	- you can make it larger by just swapping in larger drives
	- FlexRAID at least can handle 3 drive failures, Unraid 2, and the cost for
	  that seems lower than with traditional RAID
	- you can remove a drive any time and access the data on it

However, I have never used them, just talked to some people and so far they
all seem pretty happy. The way it lets you add drives is pretty interesting,
as it allows you to grow a pool gradually, while with traditional RAID you
generally need to create it with all drives at the start, and upgrades need to
follow procedure to upgrade.

Anyone have any experience with those two, or any others?

Right now I use ZFS, and in order to expand my main array, I'd basically have
to start over with a new set of drives, and I find that a problem right now on
a budget. I really like the idea of putting in a 3TB drive and instantly
getting protected storage increase, and then add more drives as I can afford
them and/or use the space.

Anyway, right now this is mostly curiosity. My plan is to just bite the bullet
and build a new ZFS array, but it does seem really wasteful for my hobby
usage.




--
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com