Back in January, I built a dedicated machine to act as a media center. Couldn't be happier making this decision! Since I also have steam and other things running on it, I've decided to just go with Win8.
Since it's a machine built around low power usage and I had not yet invested in a NAS, I've decided to just have this media center act as one. Sort of a second role. (Lowest power usage + no network usage when watching a movie / listening to music / ... )
Ever since I built the machine, I've been very curious about drive pooling. I have not yet set up anything so far, but I've been dying to. The biggest caveat for most solutions is that it's not just a simple NTFS based solution, meaning it will be a pain in the ass to recover stuff when something goes wrong.
After letting the subject rest for quite a while, I accidentally stumbled upon Stablebit's drivepool page again. In theory, the product seems amazing and I like how simple the setup seems. (E.g. a sort of "pool" folder on an ntfs drive where the magic happens)
Another major contender in this range of pooling is drivebender, which is currently having a sale (which doesn't make the choice easier). drivepool seems to always be ahead of them, though. The community seems more active as well. And the fact that their site is almost nearly identical to poolHD (the third big contender in this type of drive pooling) is somewhat concerning to me.
What do you guys think?
Does anyone have experience with drive pooling? Is it worth the trouble?
So far drivepool seems the best, or should i go the "real" way and go with something like flexraid / unraid?
tl;dr
- drivepool
- drivebender
- poolhd
- flexraid
- unraid
- something else?
- nothing at all?
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