For mostly static content, where the bulk of the data isn’t changing, SnapRaid is great. I usually make mostly additions only, and I only do so a few times a week at most. Anytime I change a decent amount, I do a sync. The non-real time nature of SnapRaid is fine for me. Some people script it like a cron job, but I usually just run the command manually after making big changes. It’s two words “snapraid sync”, runs in the background, and does the business.
does a fine job of describing the benefits and ideal use-cases for it.
While I’m mostly in the minority here, and in other forums, I simply don’t like standard RAID or alternative file systems. The idea that the entire “thing” (pool, array, whatever) can be rendered completely unreadable due to a partial failure is just an untenable state for me. I can just imagine getting some cryptic error message and my stuff is just not accessible due to some weird synchronization problem. There are nightmare examples all over the place.
Of course you have a backup(as do I have my setup), but why put yourself in jeopardy?
In both the cases of DrivePool and SnapRaid, you can simply yank a drive out, and in the worst case you lose simply the files on that drive. And “dd_rescue” can go to work on the pulled drive with other NTFS-aware applications being used for the recovery.
Don’t like DrivePool? Just stop using it. Zero dependencies on any external metadata. You don’t need to copy your data off or “migrate” your stuff. Take your drivepool disks out of the original machine, plug it into another Windows box WITHOUT drivepool, and all of your data is immediately accessible. If you use the duplication feature, you might have multiple copies of the same files – big deal.
Don’t like SnapRaid? Just stop using it. Nothing gets “installed” It’s a single executable in a directory. Delete the parity files and just never run the executable again. Nothing to rebuild or migrate.
Want to add a disk of arbitrary size containing existing files? Add the drive to drive pool (takes a few seconds), and then MOVE your files into the created directory(also super fast operation). Add a single line to your snapraid.conf file, and just run a snapraid sync.
Want to remove a disk? Drivepool automatically moves the data off the disk to other drives on command. If the drive contains just duplicated data, do a “fast remove” and allow the duplication to occur in the background.
I also believe most snapraid functions are linear to the amount of data stored, not the capacity.
Everything sits on top of a native file system.
These are the reasons I really like DrivePool + SnapRaid.