[mixedCase]

I just put two 8TB drives into btrfs because it's a home server, I can't provision things up front. One day I may put a third 8TB drive and turn this RAID1 into RAID5. btrfs lets me do that, zfs doesn't, simple as.

One day I may switch the whole thing to bcachefs, which I've donated and am looking forwards to. For the moment, btrfs will have to do.

EDIT: downvoted by... the filesystem brigade?

[michaelmrose]

I disagree with this statement on multiple fronts. On the first level of the onion RAID1 is for high reliability and BTRFS has historically low reliability but if you peel back that layer you are presenting the ability to transition from BTRFS RAID1 to RAID5 as an appealing feature of BTRFS vs ZFS and yet this just isn't so.

BTRFS has been promising usable RAID5 since 2009 when it was "heading for 1.0" and yet among the most recent developments not but 3 months ago was to add the following warning to btrfs-progs on creation or conversion.

"RAID5/6 support has known problems is strongly discouraged to be used besides testing or evaluation,"

Worse this feature was presented as usable around 2011/12 before being revealed to be unfixably data eating without substantial rewrites in 2016 and 5 years later remains so.

Your hardware might need to be replaced before you can avail yourself of the benefit you posit.

Meanwhile an approach that would actually work on both BTRFS and ZFS would be to add 2 drives to go from RAID1 to RAID10.

The last peel of onion is complaining about down votes. This invites more down votes. If I had to guess people down voted you because you presented a feature that has been a massive pain point for BTRFS as a proposed advantage.

[nix23]

>RAID5

I wish you lots of fun with that on btrfs :)

Edit:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status

RAID56 Unstable n/a write hole still exists

> treated as if I'm storing business data or precious memories without backups, guess I'm just dumb

No your not, but don't use unstable features in a filesystem

[mixedCase]

Well, that's the idea! This a low I/O media server where all the important stuff (<5G of photos) has 2+ redundancy, once remotely, and on every workstation I sync, with the rest of the data being able to crash and burn without much repercussion.

The whole point of me using RAID1 (and maybe later RAID5) is that if a disk goes bust, odds are I can still watch a movie from it until I can get another disk. What's more, if I ever fill the RAID1 and I don't feel like breaking the piggy bank for another disk, I can go JBOD as far as my usecase is concerned.

But hey, if the orange website tells me all servers are supposed to be treated as if I'm storing business data or precious memories without backups, guess I'm just dumb. On that note: donations welcome, each 8TB disk costs close to 500 USD here in Uruguay, so if anyone's first world opinion can buy me a couple so I can use the Right Filesystem™, I'd appreciate it!

[nix23]

Look i really don't care was FS you use, just don't use unstable features. If you pay so much for your disks JUST for your movies, it seams they have some value for you.

>so if anyone's first world opinion can buy

Oh buhuu, says the Guy who can afford a NAS for his movies and >2 workstations, stop with your wannabe victim role.

[michaelmrose]

At 500 a disk you could fly a consultant out to demonstrate a high capacity storage solution consisting of many $200 disks who just happens to forget to bring the disks back!

[edgyquant]

There are a large group of people who really dislike BTRFS. I think they were probably burned by it at some point but I’ve never had trouble and I’ve been using it since it became the default on fedora.