I want to set up a file server on my home LAN with just consumer-grade
hardware, and run Debian stable on it. For hardware, I am probably
going to get a refurbished mid-range tower with a four to six 3.5" SATA
drive capacity, and put WD Reds in it.
What I'm not sure of which filesystem to use. I could just use ext4
with RAID5 or RAID6 to get striping with some fault tolerance (i.e. time
to replace a failed drive without losing everything). ZFS looks easier,
but only if you're on BSD. btrfs sounds like ZFS for Linux, but it
appears to still be of beta quality, and I can't tell whether it can yet
do striping with parity. Any advice?
ext4 is the best way to go unless you have extremely specific needs or you really want to overcomplicate things for a hobby.