What a great user community forum!
Thank you all for your prompt responses and the great knowledge base.
Following the advice given in this thread, I did the following:
1- Using the P410i, I created 8 individual RAID 0 groups from the 8 installed HDs
2- I installed UnRaid and configured it with 2 failover drives and 6 data drives.
Questions:
1- The post from AnnabellaRenee87 referenced a SAS controller and a SAS expander. I believe these would accommodate the 8 drives and by pass the P410i, right?
2- The biggest liability to my configuration listed above is that I would not be able (without great difficulty) move my USB key and drives to another system? Using the SAS controller/expander would allow me to drop my drives on another box and UnRaid would recognize them? If so, that is a great feature. Given the form factor, the 2.5" drives, it would probably be pretty painful to do that, but I want to understand the system.
Again, my thanks to all your responses.
MM