Alternatives to FlexRAID?
#1
I've been using felxraid for a couple of months and it's getting annoying. It always gives me some sort of error, and then it requires hours or reading and tinkering to get it to work again.

So what else can I use to pool all my hard drives together? I don't want or need a backup feature, just want to be able to pool my 5 drives as one, and share that drive to my network.

Thanks!
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#2
unraid
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#3
Are you using 2.0? It seems much more stable, however it's time limited until the final comes out. It appears he's going commercial, so there will be a cost.

Since going FR, I haven't looked back. Actually much less trouble than my Linux file server.
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#4
You could always try out SnapRaid

http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/index.html
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#5
The problem I see with flexraid is not just that is being commercial, that is OK for me in principle, but I think the model the author has adopted is problematic: VERY expensive IMHO (100$) and no way to really try it before buying, so you have to have faith in it and expend a hundred bucks... that for a product with an insignificant user base means very few people will use it, and so there is a great risk that the author will not make any meaningful amount of money and so a high risk of abandoning it, and that leaves users (now purchasers) on quick sand... a pity, since the product has great potential and the interface is really slick (although a bit confusing, but that could be improved with time).

OTOH, I do not think that what the program does right now is so hard to do (although the author has some really ambitious ideas for the future); it does two things, 1) storage pool (combining some file system in to one) that already do a number of free products on linux (unionFS, there is at least 3 free open source implementations that I know of) 2) snapshot RAID, that is calculating parity at file level so you can rebuild any missing data up to the parity information you keep. That is exactly what some opensource utilities of the "parchive" family do, like QuickPAR (windows) or PAR2cmdline (linux, windows, mac). So, to implement functionality analogue to what FlexRAID does you do not need some high level math understanding, simply some way of organizing the original files and then use the algorithms/functions from the PAR2 source code to compute the parity or reconstructing the original files from parity. Of course that is not at all "easy" and it is a lot of work, but it is not rocket science either since you are basically incorporating other people work, that exactly is what open source is for.

The advantages of an "offline parity" drive (or more) and unionFS are enormous for the kind of storage that most users will need for a media server for a few XBMC installations on a single home, so flexraid or other similar utilities are a great companion to XBMC users.
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#6
Jorge18 Wrote:I've been using felxraid for a couple of months and it's getting annoying. It always gives me some sort of error, and then it requires hours or reading and tinkering to get it to work again.

So what else can I use to pool all my hard drives together? I don't want or need a backup feature, just want to be able to pool my 5 drives as one, and share that drive to my network.

Thanks!

If FlexRAID gives you errors you may want to investigate hardware issues. Parity redundancy is VERY VERY GOOD at finding unknown / unseen problems.

OTOH, if you just want storage pooling and you run linux, BTRFS is the way to go. While it is labled as experimental is is PLENTY stable for everyday use and has the ability to do snapshots if you want.
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#7
unRAID, all day every day. It too is commercial but I've been running it for years and years - literally - without issue. In fact I'm upgrading a 750Gig HD to 2TB right now. Effort involved? Shut down, pull old drive, boot up, click a button, wait for it to upgrade. The fact that it spins down drives not being used is awesome and it can support a ton of drives so long as mu hardware can. I run two of these and have no issues other than the fact that volume encryption isn't available. More and more I really want that! Otherwise, damn nice NAS solution...
Openelec Gotham, MCE remote(s), Intel i3 NUC, DVDs fed from unRAID cataloged by DVD Profiler. HD-DVD encoded with Handbrake to x.264. Yamaha receiver(s)
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#8
Ubuntu server + mhddfs for Pool + SnapRaid for snapshot backup + CrashPlan for full backup (if you are really worry about your files).
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#9
I use Flexraid snapshot mode only...never had issue and i use Stablebit Drivepool. Im on WHS 2011 and its been rock solid. If your running Win7, you could check out Drive bender
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Alternatives to FlexRAID?0