> True, that would be an up front cost. At the same time, the IA is still live. This initial expense can be softened by building up redundancy over some years r

> True, that would be an up front cost. At the same time, the IA is still live. This initial expense can be softened by building up redundancy over some years rather than trying to do everything at once I think with that many drives, you'd be losing them constantly, and I suppose you wouldn't know which ones until later (assuming you're doing an offline backup, if you aren't you have to factor in power costs).