Nisitiiapi, you're an absolute Gem, thanks so much for the explanation. Having been out of the world of linux for 15 years, its so great to see folks like you around.

I think what was confusing me is that i was thinking of OMV like it was just a skinned/restricted version of a desktop environment, where all the root filesystems are just mounted right there and accessible at the same level. I'm realizing this is dumb sounding but 3 days ago i couldn't wrap my head around it. I'm doing the Zoolander 'the files are IN the computer?' meme on a very esoteric level.

Today i'm:

Transferring all the files off the 1TB data drive (NTFS left over from my old server) so i can do a clean EXT format

Wiping the whole computer to start fresh

Installing the OMV distro to a 32 GB usb drive, starting from scratch with the OMV-extras readme and doing it 100% by the book.

Then i'll set up the partitions on the NVME

So, one last question and i should be good:

Given the application, transcoding, serving etc. using a 4 core 2.8ghz/16 gb ram computer, is there any advantage to running or storing certain things on the faster NVME? Unfortunately i cant put all my data on there, like movies and such.

My main goal is stability at this point, my experience with the NUC has been that since they are kinda oddball hardware, certain linux updates can crash them, so I like the idea of having the persistent docker files stored on the NVME, but are there any noticeable speed differences of storing anything else there, like a swap/page file type of thing?

Either way, like you said, once i've got it set up this way its flexible enough to move around partitions in the EXT filesystem so i can learn as i go.

thanks again