>>42434251
>>42435426
If you're interested in some literally who's opinion, in general I tend to recommend estimating required capacity first, planning and budgeting for proper backups of critical data second, and only then optionally considering RAID of some variety if increasing availability of the data when drive(s) failed is deemed worthwhile. Assuming you don't have any existing hardware you want to reuse.
This led me to two servers with RAID-Z2, 8 and 6 drives, the former being primary storage and the latter being offsite online backup box. What I don't want to lose is backed up (+ to offsite offline external HDD), what I can afford to lose forever/temporarily is under "cover my ass" features - RAID-Z2 and ZFS snapshots (automated with sanoid, highly recommending that script, quick to setup and robust). One covers my ass if up to 2 drives fail, the other if I accidentally rm -rf /tank. If those fail me, I expect to be able to redownload this data from others, or accept the loss. Makes sense for my use cases, which are poniponi, general media, and personal data.
There's also the duo of mergerfs and SnapRAID, which can give you some of the CYA features without the pains of real RAID/RAID-Z(2/3). Used it when I was a poorfag, has its quirks but saved my ass from data loss when I couldn't afford standalone backups and used mixed HDDs for the primary storage box. Wouldn't say I really needed to switch to ZFS and proper RAID, I just wanted to be able to pull out a HDD or two and keep the poni show playing. Quite fun.
But again, for some reason people create RAID arrays more often than it really benefits them, it's sad when they budget for that but not for backups. You wouldn't let Dash lose her Tank, would you?
I miss lurking /hsg/, but I don't have the energy for that nowadays. It felt nice when anons there noticed the occasional poni mentions.