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RAID setup for Ubuntu media server
(sh.itjust.works)
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I'm mainly concerned about:
Since I'll have 8 drives (or 6, if I use the smaller server, it would be nice if I could swap out one of them without losing data and add a larger one, which would then get used automatically. Is that something that RAID is good for?
I'm hesitant to set up backups because it's going to be a lot of data.
Sure, that's what RAID is designed to do. However, I'd suggest also looking into what happens when your array is degraded and how to rebuild it.
I'm a bit surprised you need fast reads with a media server. You're probably going to have to clarify your needs a bit more.
Standard RAID levels generally don't have options to add larger drives. I'm not sure what you mean by "plug and play". I'm pretty sure almost all setups will involve a fair bit of configuration.
It's also a lot of data to lose if things go more wrong than you expected (multi-drive failure, bit-rot, etc.).