Use mhddfs to group hard disks and directories
Conclusions
The only drawback in using mhddfs is the five percent performance hit in data transfer speeds, attributable to FUSE, which you can probably live with. Otherwise, everything is in favor of using mhddfs, especially because you have the option of mounting the array via Samba and NFS – this opens up many more options. In this way, you can automate network-attached storage (NAS), video disk recorder (VDR) TV software, or a media center of your choice. Mhddfs is not only suitable for multimedia files, it is particularly useful in use cases such as this, in which the size of the collection grows in the course of time.
What is a Union Filesystem?
Union filesystems, such as UnionFS, AuFS, OverlayFS, and mhddfs, have been growing in popularity in the Linux universe ever since Klaus Knopper released the first version of the Knoppix Live system. These filesystems allow users to mount multiple filesystems on top of one another concurrently. For the user, the whole enchilada looks like a single unit, and on a Live distribution, it lets users install packages without changing the system. OverlayFS has recently seen use with containers and atomic updates.
Infos
- RAID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
- LVM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)
- Copy-on-write: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-on-write
- Source code: http://svn.uvw.ru/mhddfs/trunk/
- mhddfs man page: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages//karmic/man1/mhddfs.1.html
- SnapRAID: http://www.snapraid.it/
- Backup: http://zornsoftware.codenature.info/blog/why-i-ditched-raid-and-greyhole-for-mhddfs.html
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