The_Hawkeye

@Mobius one more question is I may. Seeing that I have limited hardware... Is it possible to install HEXOS on a boot drive using old temporary HW that still have around (MB/CPU, etc), Create my pools on the temp system, installing all the apps I need Transfer the data from my current server over to the temp system, a bit a the time And then when all is done, transfer the HEXOS boot drive + the pooled drives (incl. data) to the hardware that makes up my system today. How would this work with the license ((I have only 1) ? How does HEXOS react to HW changes ?

@Mobius Thanks a lot for your in-depth answers! It's really helpful going forward!

Hi I'm currently running a win10 Ent. machine as a NAS/Server for many years without issues. Yes, I know this is far from "optimal" but it works for me. Over time it's been tuned so well, that it is now in a state in which I want to touch and change as little as possible. Unfortunately with the EOL of Win10 in October, I might not have choice... Therefore I'm thinking of changing to HexOS as an alternative. I do have several questions, challenges I see and I hope you guys can help resolve them and allow me to prep the new system. This is a long post, so apologies and many thanks for reading in advance! Current hardware: MB: Asus Maximus ranger VIII - Z170 CPU: Intel 7700T GPU: n/a (on-board) RAM: 16GB - DDR4 - 2133 MHz NIC: Intel I225 LM - 2.5Gbit network controller Boot-disk: Sasmung 830 - 256 SATA SSD HDDs - Total capacity: 41TB - Currently no RAID ! WD Green: 3TB (40% full) - my personal files and photos are on here and are backed-up off site at Hetzner WD RED: 4TB (58% full) Seagate baracuda: 4TB (23% full) WD RED Pro : 12 TB (54% full) WD RED Pro: 14 TB (64% full) WD Mybook: 4TB (32% full) - external - for back-up DVD-RW drive for back-in up physical media Next to the fact that Microsoft has decided to no longer support this hardware going forward, I still feel that is perfectly capable to perform the tasks that I want it to do. So I would like to keep the hardware for a least a few more years and not just turn it all into e-waste. The services/features I'm running: NAS for personal documents (no docs stored on my other machines) & photo storage (my full RAW collection that I edit in Light-room on another machine) - WD RED 4TB drive PLEX server - 12 + 14 TB WD Red pro drives PLEX adjacent services: SONARR, RADARR, BAZARR, JACKETT, TAUTULLI Qbittorrent for my Linux ISO's - 4TB WD RED + 4TB Seagate PIA VPN for all internet access, with some services like PLEX in SPLIT tunnel Service I would like to add: Nextcloud instance, I currently rent a nextcloud service at Hetzner in Germany (2TB) Other things I use the machine for: Backing up CDs using: Exact Audio Copy Backing up DVD: DVD Decryptor / Make MKV Downloading Youtube video: Free Youtube Download So now on to the potential HEXOS version of this machine: Does my current hardware (MB / CPU / RAM) support HEXOS ? Some of the services I run today are only compatible in Windows (e.g. Exact Audio copy), is my hardware capable of running a (Win11) VM on top of HEX OS + my other apps that will run natively (PLEX, SONARR, etc.) I fully realize that my current mis-match and no RAID setup is the absolute opposite of what HEXOS is doing. So what would be your proposed solutions ? As cost effective as possible please? Create 2 pools? e.g. 2x 4TB drives into a mirror pool for my personal data Add a new additional 12TB drive to create a 3 drive pool for my Linux ISO's (losing 2TB on one drive) Create 1 new pool: Investing in 3x new 18TB drives ? or other ? I only have 1 HEXOS license and 1 set of hardware to mount the disks, transferring over this amount of data it almost seems I will require two machines up and running? >> What would be the proposed method of transferring the data onto the new drive pools? Is there a way of temporarily mounting a drive into HEXOS to copy the data over to the new created pool ? Is there a know way of backing up/ maintaining the databases of PLEX, SONARR, etc from Windows and copying them over into new the new HEXOS versions? Other tips of things you guys think of I'm overlooking? As you can see, I'm really new to all of this! Any help and advice will be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Hawkeye