Can't you just use ZFS without RAIDZ and still have your data protected from corruption/drive failures? I think storage is hard and I never understood the advantage of RAID (at least for home usage). It really only looks like an inflexible option, with too much risk to me.

What's the benefit of RAIDZ over say, you choose to have X copies distributed over your disk(s)?

Answer: zfs: copies=n is not a substitute for device redundancy! source: http://jrs-s.net/2016/05/02/zfs-copies-equals-n/

Here's a discussion about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/4hbn8v/raidz_v...

Anyone who wants to have real security, relies on off-site backups, isn't that right? And aren't RAID(Z)s slow to recover also? (serious questions, I'm a zfs noob)

RAIDZ: I don't know what stripe-set configuration is good for me and don't want to waste time comparing RAID controllers or if I even need one. Then configuring the beast on the hardware and software side just seems to be too tedious. Why not just (de)/attach another disk and let zfs expand/shrink my total disk space without loosing consistency?

Startup idea: Someone clever should find a flexible storage solution that uses aufs, unionfs etc. to give you the flexibility we need.