- https://www.synology.com/en-au/support/RAID_calculator or similar is good to easily do these calculations
- No, but more RAID configurations than not are limited by the smallest size drive. It’s a factor to consider, assuming you can’t afford to just buy a bunch of disks. I wound up maintaining two separate NAS devices, one of which gets my old, smaller disks.
- Generally yes, though you’d be surprised how little difference disk speed makes once you get enough of them in an array.
- I use Synology with various shucked WD externals. I have a bunch of other stuff in my homelab though, so I need the storage to not be it’s own project, else I likely would have built something less expensive. I’m sure there will be better suggestions in this thread than mine.
Dumb.