For the mixed size drives, I believe, one of the best options are unRAID and mergerfs with snapraid. Also, if you want to use windows, stablebit drivepool would make it and snapraid can be used for redundancy.
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Lol, I'm not using windows for this. If I never see windows server again I'll be happy.
I'm probably going to go Unraid, more research along with some posts haven't actually found anything better at this point. Maybe that company LTT invested in will one day release something.
The only other good option was truenas, but it doesn't seem to meet my multi drive size spec well. ( Without some jankness that would impact my want for low maintenance)
So, yeah, the most decent option is unRAID.
It will handle different size drives (the biggest drive will be used for parity).
Have a look at mergerfs. Doesn't give you any redundancy like raid does, but allows you to easily mix, add and remove drives of different sizes. It all depends on your needs, priorities and backup strategie.
Depends on how technical you are and how much time you have.
If I had tons of time to figure it out, I would do a NixOS/bcachefs setup. But I have a high risk tolerance. For most people it probably wouldn't be worth it.