Storage spaces - is Parity mode worth it

Hi there

Getting fed up with loads of different Physical HDD's I've decided to use the Storage Spaces facility and create a 9TB storage spacel.

Previously I used simple spanning but pooling volumes into a storage space seems to be the way to go now.

Since I've already archived my main music files I can get the fastest efficiency by not using mirroring or parity - with IMO the acceptable risk that I can lose some data if an HDD fails -- in my experience this doesn't happen very often so with decent backup I think the risk is worth while.

I'm not running a commercial server so restoring data as fast as possible won't be a priority. I always have regular backups so recovery isn't an issue even if it could take time.

What I'm interested in is does the concept work -- have people used the storage space concept without getting into lots of problems. I certainly like the idea of not having to bother physically where data is located - I can then organise data decently and also not be worried if a disk becomes full for example when creating a music library.

Anybody experienced in using this stuff -- seems a great way to use lots of older HDD's aggregating them into a large data space than have several X 320 GB discrete drives.

My OS in on a separate SSD so I won't lose performance by doing this from what I can see.

Cheers
jimbo