Sorry, I don’t mean to accuse you of anything. I should’ve made it more clear that most people just won’t try new things no matter how easy you make it for them. They will literally turn their brain off if it’s outside of their comfort zone no matter if it’s just the tiniest of steps.
Your mistake was telling them something scary and leaving, the very first pixel out of place and they gave up. People don’t want you to give them projects, they want you to fix their problems.
If it’s a system you’re sure of the use case then set it up to be a Windows clone like you planned and tell them you found a (locked down and lightweight) long service life distro based on Windows 8 or something. Yes, it’s a lie. Nobody will care as long as it works generally like they’re used to, I promise. But if you have to explain caveats to their normal workflow like you’re giving a tutorial then you might as well not bother.
Has no one mentioned shucking yet? I’ve had 8 shucked drives in my server for 5yrs now and the motherboard died before any of my drives did.
Buy western digital external drives (MyBook and Passports) to tear them apart for the white-label drives on the inside. No warranties after you start using them (unless you save the enclosures to send them back) but they’re essentially the same drive as the red label NAS drives for about half the price.
All storage prices are insane in the current market but if you’re careful and test the drives before you use them (since that’s when you usually need the warranty) then you shouldn’t have a problem. Just be aware you’re either going to need to use the “kapton tape trick” or buy “SAS drive adapters” from your online store of choice for about $10 apiece to allow the drives to power on outside of the enclosure.
#2 ;)