It has been just over a year since I bought my unRAID licenses and I have to say that it has changed the way I manage my data.  I have gotten all of my old files organized, my music, videos, photos, and backups stored redundantly.  I can honestly say that I am more organized than I have been since drives went over a gigabyte.

 

But as I stretch my uses of unRAID, I continue to bump into write performance issues.  Although the parity protected set is great, and the cache drive really helps, there is a class of information that I want to be immediately redundant and I want to be fast. This includes things like VM images, "My Document" files, databases, and current development projects.  These files are important (i.e., need to be redundantly store) and are frequently updated.  Sometimes the files are huge.

 

I have considered using my cache drive to store these items, but it is really no more secure (actually less so since I backup to unRAID) than just storing it on my local workstation which is faster as well.  If unRAID offered an ability to add a mirrored pair to run in parallel with the array, I think may people would consider using that.  The mirrored pair could be used as the cache disk, providing instant redundancy for added data, and also used for long-term storage of the kinds of data I mention above.

 

I know that hardware solutions exist and could invisibly provide this feature, but that is more hardware to buy and loses the ability to spin down drives.  If unRAID could support a simple mirrored pair, I think that would be an excellent feature.

I 2nd this request.  The issues he mentioned are exactly the reasons why I am not currently using a cache drive.

going to bump this because I think it's really important. 

 

You could always simulate it in with various commands but something built in would be fantasic!  I'm sure everyone has data that they want triple protected.