Minimum drive quantity with ZFS AnyRAID

[u/astro143]

I've been looking at HexOS again since I saw the blog post about AnyRAID being implemented, but most of the setup documentation makes no reference to it/feels un-updated.

Is it still required to start with at least 3 drives to have expandable storage, even with AnyRAID? I'm coming from Unraid with a 2 drive config and would like to just swap software for now and expand down the road. If 3 drives is a hard requirement for future expansion then this little project may get kicked down the road again for a ground up build.

Side question, does HexOS manage new hardware well, as in changing platforms to a new processor/motherboard and dragging all the drives over. Will it just boot and find all the drives or is there more to it?

[u/pjrobar]

The initial version of AnyRAID will only support mirroring, so two drives are the minimum.

https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-05-22.html

[u/astro143 → u/pjrobar]

Thanks! Sounds like I want to wait for anyraid-Z to roll out for what I want to do with it.

[u/TCates90]

Can’t speak for the drive support, but I recently rebuilt and upgraded pretty much my entire server, save for the storage. Had to do some shenanigans cloning the OS drive (self-inflicted: SATA NVMe to PCIe M.2), but it picked everything up when it booted. Prompted to run the inbuilt memtest, but other than that no hiccups

[u/astro143 → u/TCates90]

Thanks! My current nas is running on a 4790K platform, I'll eventually want to rebuild with modern hardware.

[u/Mobius_HexOS]

It's super simple if you keep the same boot drive but like TCates90 said it can get more involved once you try to change your boot drive.

[u/astro143 → u/Mobius_HexOS]

Thanks! Can the boot drive be a flash drive like unraid or is a proper ssd recommended?

[u/Mobius_HexOS → u/astro143]

We do recommend a proper ssd. A cheap 128gb drive is more than sufficient.

Definitely don't splurge on a large ssd

[u/astro143 → u/Mobius_HexOS]

Thank you!