Mark: In general, I agree with you, but there are two small flaws in your reasoning. First of all, WHS does not provide double data redundancy; it provides single redundancy. There is the primary copy of the data and the backup copy. unRAID also provides single redundancy: the primary copy of the data and the backup that is stored in parity data. (If 2 of 5 drives fail, you would lose the data on the failed drive, but the data on the other drives would still be readable. WHS would have to have strong and frequent warning messages in the event of a drive failure.)
Something else to consider is that WHS has basically half the storage density of unRAID-type storage, so it would require roughly twice the number of hard drives (for equivalent available space) and would have twice the opportunity for a disk failure.
Also, an unRAID-type configuration does not preclude the ability to mirror important data on more than one disk. That would give true double redundancy: mirrored backup and parity backup.
I think the target audience for WHS isn't ONLY "your average Joe." True, not everyone would be interested in flexible software RAID (similar to unRAID), but some would be. It would be nice if MS addressed the needs of both audiences. If WHS had this type of advanced disk management, I'd purchase it immediately. Otherwise, it's just too expensive to add 2 disks every time you need more storage space and only get the available space of one of those drives.
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Mark: In general, I agree with you, but there are two small flaws in your reasoning. First of all, WHS does not provide double data redundancy; it provides single redundancy. There is the primary copy of the data and the backup copy. unRAID also provides single redundancy: the primary copy of the data and the backup that is stored in parity data. (If 2 of 5 drives fail, you would lose the data on the failed drive, but the data on the other drives would still be readable. WHS would have to have strong and frequent warning messages in the event of a drive failure.)
Something else to consider is that WHS has basically half the storage density of unRAID-type storage, so it would require roughly twice the number of hard drives (for equivalent available space) and would have twice the opportunity for a disk failure.
Also, an unRAID-type configuration does not preclude the ability to mirror important data on more than one disk. That would give true double redundancy: mirrored backup and parity backup.
I think the target audience for WHS isn't ONLY "your average Joe." True, not everyone would be interested in flexible software RAID (similar to unRAID), but some would be. It would be nice if MS addressed the needs of both audiences. If WHS had this type of advanced disk management, I'd purchase it immediately. Otherwise, it's just too expensive to add 2 disks every time you need more storage space and only get the available space of one of those drives.