Doesn’t losing a vdev cause the entire pool to be lost? I guess to your point with sufficient redundancy for new vdev 1 drive redundancy whether 3 disks or 5 is essentially the same risk. If a vdev is added without redundancy that would increase risk of losing the entire pool.

https://archive.org/details/swgrap

I don’t know what inspired you to write this, but thank you. It has been over a year and a half since I’ve exercised in any real capacity. Todays plan was to do it today. As the day progressed it kept getting easier and easier to justify doing it tomorrow.

After reading this post it motivated me to push through the excuses and get on the stationary cycle. Thank you.