couple of storage pool questions

I've been using flexraid for the parity function but I have not used the storage pooling. My media collection has grown to the point where this would be helpful so I have a couple of questions. MY setup for the new server will be 6 2tb dru and 1 2tb ppu for the time being.

1. with storage pooling this will show up as one drive, will I be able to map media center/media browser to that drive or should I use unc?
2. will I be able to access the pooled drive from other computers on the network like a normal hard drive for copying files?
3. will it split parts of the file eg byte 1 on hdd1 byte 2 on hdd2 etc or would the movie be kept whole so I can access it via the real drive icon in case I decide to revert back from storage pooling.
4. any idea if this will be easliy upgraded to the new storage pooling that is to be released soon or should I wait?

Thanks a lot for the help.

Although we are in the middle of Brahim changing the whole pooling backbone, I can attempt answering this.

1. Yes you can map. Certainly on top folder level. I am not sure deeper.

2. Like a normal mapped drive.

3. No keeps files whole.

4. Why not. It's a way to VIEW your data. In the next one even if it won't "migrate" you will just make it have the same configuration. I am not sure about the internal use of _flxrd_ folders though (which I hate btw...).

Some precision about the 1.:
MB folks are recommending to use UNC and not mapped drives. Not sure about the why.
See http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/1372/how-to-add-a-media-collection

In my case, I have under my storage pool drive:
F:\Movies
F:\Series
etc.

Each of those are shared.

On my HTPC, the Movies collection is mapped to \\Server\Movies.
And it works great.

I also have my IBN in the storage pool, in another drive.

And about the 4.:
Agree with NLS, anyway by using the Storage Pool, you'll be able to see the content of each drive making the pool. The files are distributed depending on the merge mode you've selected. Since FlexRAID supports drives with data, there will be no issue reusing those drives with the future FlexRAID, by recreating your storage pool. It will remerge your folders.

Hoping that "FlexRAID supports drives with data" will still be true with that future version

awesome thank you guys. One more question if you could. do I need to create the folders in advance of setting up pooling for example

If I had

f:\movies
g:\tv

would I need ot make a g:\movies and f:\tv folder

Sorry for the newbie questions and I appreciate the help.

No.

If you select one of the auto merge mode, everything's automatic.
You just add your drives to the pool, and you've got yourself 1 gigantic drive.