HexOS Experience on a Lenovo P520

[alfasierraalfa]

Inspired by @FallenHero234's post:

Background:

Had this as an idea for a while now - was lurking around for years, until I saw that LTT video. Got in at $99 sale.
Though to myself "might as well get on with it" (SO works with videos, myself toy with DAW) and got myself a refurb P520 and a couple of those EXOS refurbs.

Specs:

• CPU: Intel Xeon W-2223
• GPU: Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB
• RAM: 16GB DDR4
• Storage:
  • Boot Drive: 256GB M.2 SSD
  • Data Drive: 2x refurb 18TB Seagate EXOS X20 HDD

Experience so far:

• Got the part last Friday, waited till Sunday to add the HDDs to the P520, opened that video and the illustrated install guide and installed - everything was smooth and straightforward.
  • Started with Immich - what an awesome experience; transferred a number of lesser albums, right now am learning
  • Plex was next - took a minute to figure out how to point to correct library folders, but 30 mins of lurking got it sorted. Again, a smooth performance;
  • After that installed Actual via the Truenas UI - basically, it went fine as well and seems so far to be smooth.

I guess right now I'm sort of cautiously exploring - looking at CPU load, and slowly transferring data in small chunks to relevant folders. However, am thinking of:

• Moving my HomeAssistant (running on a VM in VirtualBox on an old Mac Mini I had laying around);
• Adding more drives (the current pool is not expandable, so will redo the setup to make an expandable pool once I get the third 18 TB HDD) as well as creating additional pools, got a bunch of 2.5 HDDs & SSDs laying around:
  • Specifically went for P520 because can fit more 3.5 HDDs and still have room for smaller drives.

Other than that - pretty happy I did this and no regrets (knock on wood, haha).

[Dylan]

@alfasierraalfa Yeah, slow and easy with an eye for re0-installation is the path I've taken as well. I'm waiting for official raidz2 support so only throwing things on my NAS that if I had to loose, I can always recover. How are those re-furb disks working for you?

[Mawson]

12 hours ago, alfasierraalfa said:

• • Data Drive: 2x refurb 18TB Seagate EXOS X20 HDD

 

 

Small word of caution: By starting with only 2 drives you won't have the ability to add more to the pool later via RAIDz Expansion.

That's totally fine, I just want to make sure that if you are imagining expanding your pool later you know that you will have to completely rebuild it to add the 3rd drive, since it has to change from  a mirror to ZFS.

IMO that's probably the one thing I would have changed about the initial LTT video would have been to have them use 3 drives to start.

[alfasierraalfa]

On 2/8/2025 at 4:26 AM, Mawson said:

 

Small word of caution: By starting with only 2 drives you won't have the ability to add more to the pool later via RAIDz Expansion.

That's totally fine, I just want to make sure that if you are imagining expanding your pool later you know that you will have to completely rebuild it to add the 3rd drive, since it has to change from  a mirror to ZFS.

IMO that's probably the one thing I would have changed about the initial LTT video would have been to have them use 3 drives to start.

Hey, @Mawson - am aware! Am planning to add more drives soon and then redo the main pool properly.

[alfasierraalfa]

On 2/8/2025 at 1:29 AM, Dylan said:

@alfasierraalfa Yeah, slow and easy with an eye for re0-installation is the path I've taken as well. I'm waiting for official raidz2 support so only throwing things on my NAS that if I had to loose, I can always recover. How are those re-furb disks working for you?

Same, not using it for irrecoverable stuff just yet.

[alfasierraalfa]

On 2/8/2025 at 1:29 AM, Dylan said:

@alfasierraalfa Yeah, slow and easy with an eye for re0-installation is the path I've taken as well. I'm waiting for official raidz2 support so only throwing things on my NAS that if I had to loose, I can always recover. How are those re-furb disks working for you?

So far so good! But it's been what, 2 week as of next Friday?😄
But again, seem just like those refurbs from this video.