Hi Peter,
Thanks for putting this together, your visuals are clear and very helpful. I checked the Mural board and the flows make perfect sense. You’ve captured the current behaviour accurately and the expected behaviour you outline is exactly the type of clarity users look for, especially around external drive handling and 3-2-1 backup destinations.
Just to confirm the technical side:
• USB drives in ZimaOS are currently treated as external/removable only. They aren’t part of the ZimaStorage pool and can’t be used in RAID today, this is by design, not a bug.
• Backups also follow that separation, which is why the dashboard and desktop app only expose “local ZimaOS storage” instead of every attached drive.
Your suggestion essentially closes the gap between what users expect (“If the drive is connected, let me manage it or back up to it”) and what ZimaOS currently allows. The way you mapped the “today vs expected” behaviour makes the issue extremely clear without being critical.
I think this kind of structured feedback is valuable for the team, and I’d encourage you to share the visual mock-ups directly with community@icewhale.org
as well, they help prioritise real-world use-cases.
Nice work, and thanks again for laying it out so clearly.