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UnRAID
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<h1 id="mergerfs-versus-x">mergerfs versus X</h1>
<h4 id="mhddfs">mhddfs</h4>
<p>mhddfs had not been maintained for some time and has some known
stability and security issues. mergerfs provides a superset of mhddfs'
features and should offer the same or better performance.</p>
<p>Below is an example of mhddfs and mergerfs setup to work similarly.</p>
<p><code>mhddfs -o mlimit=4G,allow_other /mnt/drive1,/mnt/drive2 /mnt/pool</code></p>
<p><code>mergerfs -o minfreespace=4G,category.create=ff /mnt/drive1:/mnt/drive2 /mnt/pool</code></p>
<h4 id="aufs">aufs</h4>
<p>aufs is mostly abandoned and no longer available in most Linux distros.</p>
<p>While aufs can offer better peak performance mergerfs provides more
configurability and is generally easier to use. mergerfs however does
not offer the overlay / copy-on-write (CoW) features which aufs has.</p>
<h4 id="unionfs-fuse">unionfs-fuse</h4>
<p>unionfs-fuse is more like aufs than mergerfs in that it offers overlay /
copy-on-write (CoW) features. If you're just looking to create a union
of filesystems and want flexibility in file/directory placement then
mergerfs offers that whereas unionfs is more for overlaying read/write
filesystems over read-only ones.</p>
<h4 id="overlayfs">overlayfs</h4>
<p>overlayfs is similar to aufs and unionfs-fuse in that it also is
primarily used to layer a read/write filesystem over one or more
read-only filesystems. It does not have the ability to spread
files/directories across numerous filesystems.</p>
<h4 id="raid0-jbod-drive-concatenation-striping">RAID0, JBOD, drive concatenation, striping</h4>
<p>With simple JBOD / drive concatenation / stripping / RAID0 a single
drive failure will result in full pool failure. mergerfs performs a
similar function without the possibility of catastrophic failure and
the difficulties in recovery. Drives may fail but all other
filesystems and their data will continue to be accessible.</p>
<p>The main practical difference with mergerfs is the fact you don't
actually have contiguous space as large as if you used those other
technologies. Meaning you can't create a 2TB file on a pool of 2 1TB
filesystems.</p>
<p>When combined with something like <a href="http://www.snapraid.it">SnapRaid</a>
and/or an offsite backup solution you can have the flexibility of JBOD
without the single point of failure.</p>
<h4 id="unraid">UnRAID</h4>
<p>UnRAID is a full OS and its storage layer, as I understand, is
proprietary and closed source. Users who have experience with both
have often said they prefer the flexibility offered by mergerfs and
for some the fact it is open source is important.</p>
<p>There are a number of UnRAID users who use mergerfs as well though I'm
not entirely familiar with the use case.</p>
<p>For semi-static data mergerfs + <a href="http://www.snapraid.it">SnapRaid</a>
provides a similar solution.</p>
<h4 id="zfs">ZFS</h4>
<p>mergerfs is very different from ZFS. mergerfs is intended to provide
flexible pooling of arbitrary filesystems (local or remote), of
arbitrary sizes, and arbitrary filesystems. For <code>write once, read
many</code> usecases such as bulk media storage. Where data integrity and
backup is managed in other ways. In those usecases ZFS can introduce a
number of costs and limitations as described
<a href="http://louwrentius.com/the-hidden-cost-of-using-zfs-for-your-home-nas.html">here</a>,
<a href="https://markmcb.com/2020/01/07/five-years-of-btrfs/">here</a>, and
<a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/solaris/ZFSWhyNoRealReshaping">here</a>.</p>
<h4 id="stablebits-drivepool">StableBit's DrivePool</h4>
<p>DrivePool works only on Windows so not as common an alternative as
other Linux solutions. If you want to use Windows then DrivePool is a
good option. Functionally the two projects work a bit
differently. DrivePool always writes to the filesystem with the most
free space and later rebalances. mergerfs does not offer rebalance but
chooses a branch at file/directory create time. DrivePool's
rebalancing can be done differently in any directory and has file
pattern matching to further customize the behavior. mergerfs, not
having rebalancing does not have these features, but similar features
are planned for mergerfs v3. DrivePool has builtin file duplication
which mergerfs does not natively support (but can be done via an
external script.)</p>
<p>There are a lot of misc differences between the two projects but most
features in DrivePool can be replicated with external tools in
combination with mergerfs.</p>
<p>Additionally, DrivePool is a closed source commercial product vs
mergerfs a ISC licensed OSS project.</p>
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