The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/rtsynk on 2025-07-27 19:25:41+00:00.
What I want:
- flexibly add/remove disks of any size
- present contents as one large drive
- store at least 2 copies of a file
- STORE FILES IN A NORMAL FILESYSTEM - I want to be able to pull a drive from the array, pop it in another computer and easily copy off all the files stored on it. No stripes, no tiles, no proprietary volumes, etc
Optional:
- some sort of checksum/parity
What's not important:
- performance (within reason)
- spinning down disks
- booting from the volume
The way I want it to work is that if you write /temp1/temp2/test/file.ext, it will actually put that file in that path on 2 of the drives. It will choose the drives based on the size of the file and the available free space of the different drives.
It will maintain an index (as a file on all the drives) of all the files in the merged volume and on which disks each file is
The main goals are:
- redundancy
- flexibility (to add/remove drives as needed)
- ease of use (just one volume so no juggling which drive to put files on)
- easy recovery from whatever jankiness the raid software displays (way too many horror stories of how the controller/software messes up and the entire volume is lost, no thank you)
EDIT
to everyone saying I want a backup, not a raid, i want both
when people talk about raid having parity so it can rebuild a missing drive, no one bats an eye
when unraid and others advertise that they store files in a regular filesystem to make recovery easier, everyone agrees it's a swell idea
but if I ask for having 2 actual copies (not including any parity) then suddenly it's a bunch of eye-twitching and reminders that "raid isn't a backup" and "that's what a backup solution is for"
RAID-1 has been around forever, I just want a more evolved version of that
yes i need a separate backup off-system and off-site, and that's great, but I still want a way to merge drives with duplication