I switched to raid z2 from a 6 drive mirror and what an ordeal that was. It’s because I had to grow into it and buy drives over time but eventually the mirror was too inefficient.
I moved data around like 5 times all because I still didn’t have enough disks to build my new array and keep my data on the system at the same time. And expanding raidz expands parity on all disks but not the data so you have to recopy all your data so it stripes fully.
I had a backup on a DAS but USB is slow and I didn’t want to have it be the only copy.
Disks that can fail. I can lose 2 and be okay. That gives me time to swap in my spare or order a new one. For a home user imo 2 drive redundancy is plenty but 3 for a 6 drive mirror was too much. These things aren’t cheap!
I switched to raid z2 from a 6 drive mirror and what an ordeal that was. It’s because I had to grow into it and buy drives over time but eventually the mirror was too inefficient.
I moved data around like 5 times all because I still didn’t have enough disks to build my new array and keep my data on the system at the same time. And expanding raidz expands parity on all disks but not the data so you have to recopy all your data so it stripes fully.
I had a backup on a DAS but USB is slow and I didn’t want to have it be the only copy.
I plan on having a raid of 5 drives and a hot spare, with a cold spare next to the NAS.
I am considering 8/10 TB drives, I currently have less than 10 TB of data in my archive.
What are the advantages of the different raid z leves?
Disks that can fail. I can lose 2 and be okay. That gives me time to swap in my spare or order a new one. For a home user imo 2 drive redundancy is plenty but 3 for a 6 drive mirror was too much. These things aren’t cheap!