I already decided to by a drobo fs until I just found these two tests:

• http://www.digitalversus.com/data-robotics-drobo-fs-p889_9543_487.html
• http://www.digitalversus.com/lime-technology-unraid-p889_8992_473.html

The two cons agains drobo for me:

• loudness
• price

What disadvantages has the unraid stuff against the drobo fs? Has it also got that ease of use like swapping drives on the go, simply extend capacity by plugging in new drives, notify me of drive errors, disk failure protection, dynamic space of "partitions", better/worse effective capacity, etc. Which is more secure? Am I able to simply replace a bad drive with a new one on unraid? What happens if my pc fails? Lets say the cpu overheats.

Since I have a complete pc which is going to be replaced, I only have to pay the software to use unraid.

I am going to use my nas for:

• music library (how well does it integrate with iTunes? )
• picture library
• movie library
• development (i need to be able to be to use time machine)

I am going to use this nas with a MacBook pro.

My current disks:

• 2x 500Gb
• 1x 1.5Tb
• 1x 2Tb

On a drobo fs I would have 2.26 Tb of space. What would it be on unraid?

Is FreeNAS also an alternative?