Pyrotechnut

Cheers, am honestly more of a lurker but your questions reminded me of me about 1 year ago. I initially went with freenas and regretted it as I ended up setting things up several times when it didn't meet my needs. Just want to help you avoid the pitfalls I had.

Yep. There is a default share for apps and another for VMs. Remember that unraid is looking at the drives directly so using a hardware raid card will cause problems. Unraid is nice because you get to keep more of the overall storage Vs raid as you only choose 1 or 2 drives for parity even in large pools. Sorry about delay, didn't get notified when you replied

I am currently replacing hardware in my server due to drive controller failure so If you have any questions I will do my best to help

Unraid stores it's boot files on the usb stick, when you boot the entire is runs from ram. Unraid only writes the changes on boot or when you make a config change. You can install apps and use docker to run specific apps including Plex. You can plug in drives which are not part of your array or pool and copy them manually which will run at sata speeds. There is a channel run by space Invaders e on YouTube with setup guides which is up to date. Be aware that your unraid licence is tied to the usb drive so while you can have a trial for 30 days before buying, get a good quality drive if you decide to move forward.