I am looking for a direct attached storage solution (DAS) for my Mac, which should fulfil the following requirements:
-High reliability (e.g. RAID 1)
-Bitrot-resistant (e.g. ZFS, BTRFS)
-Super-fast (e.g. SSDs)
-TimeMachine compatible
-Mac security remains intact, i.e. no software with kernel extensions
->All in all, fairly widespread requirements
At first I searched for commercial solutions and was surprised to find none.
My second idea was to connect 2 SSDs (Samsung T9) to the Mac via USB 3.2, install OpenZFS on the Mac and create a RAID 1. Unfortunately, OpenZFS uses kernel extensions, which means that the Mac can only be operated in reduced security mode, which I don't want.
My third idea was to use a smaller computer (e.g. ASUS NUC) with Linux with ZFS, which manages a RAID 1 pool with the two external SSDs and which can be used directly as an external storage medium. directly connected to the Mac as an external storage medium via Thunderbolt or USB 3.2. This solution would fulfil all the necessary requirements at a modest additional cost.
I would therefore be very interested to hear whether anyone has successfully implemented such a solution or knows of an even better solution to my problem. Many thanks in advance!