jq is mot custom syntax though, it is just JSONPath standarsld. Which is also used to query JSON in JSON fields in MySQL for instance.

I'll be honest, I never tried it that way. But it should be possible. If you have the possibility, I'd advise to simulate that in a VM, then you'll know for sure! But basically importing zpools should even be OS agnostic, as it is an open standard that you can just install on any OS. I've heard stories about people even migrating pools from core to scale and vice versa, which is going from BSD (core) to scale (debian linux).

I think for now that should be fine. I got daily cloud backups, and got a way to remotely turn off the PC if a disk degrades or faults. I might also even get a disk as hot or cold spare just to be sure. With 2 mirrors I got quite a bit of performance, and in a sense better off than with a single mirror.

I'm using the storage to host Nextcloud, and the performance was just not really good enough with a singular disk of speed. I'm hosting it for me and the wife so we can both share pictures with each other without needing a privacy invasive third party :)

Glad to hear! :)

I wasn't completely clear I think. I currently have 1*mirror vdev of 8TB. I'm thinking of adding another mirror vdev. That would stripe the data between both. Meaning that per vdev there would be less data. That would lead to quicker (thus safer?) resilversing in the case of a singular disk failure per vdev, correct?

What do you mean live? Sorry, I'm still quite new to this..

I'm not sure exactly what your setup is, if you have data in the OS pool that might be gone, unless you can boot the system from a stick and mount that disk to copy data over. Zpool export isn't strictly necessary.

If your data is in a different pool then it should be theoretically easy to just import that pool in a new install.

Hmm I think RAID5 would be risky. If I have a 16TB array and then get a failure, resilvering would take long and that could bring a second disk down..

That is true, but I was indeed not counting it as such, I currently just have the cloud as a backup.

I understand, but I was thinking, since I have a cloud backup, if my drive(s) fail I cam still always recover, correct?

Yes definitely! It is personal data like family videos, photo's and documents mostly. I'm using this nextcloud for the whole family.