I currently use a Synology NAS + Expansion unit. Devided over different pools, one with SHR-2 for 8 drived and one with SHR-1 for 5 drives.

Im going to build a seperate server to run all my dockers. I initially planned to keep my media files on the NAS and connect it through SMB with my server. The more I look into Unraid, the more interesting it becomes to move my drives to the server itself.

But besides the fact that im not sure how I would fit 13 drives into a pc case, I’m also not sure how safe Unraid is. I’ve read that there is 1 (or 2) parity drives, but does this mean that these drives always spin up with everything you do? Wouldn’t that shorten its lifespan significantly compared to a SHR configuration?

With Synology I can setup a scheduled checksum that checks all my drives and even repairs data (bitrot for example). Is this something Unraid can do too?