First thing it did was overwrite the partition table and everything else with that, to make its own, since it could disregard all the existing data.

I agree with the other commenter, commercial recovery, if the data was that crucial.

I haven’t used raidz but a quick search tells me it supports single-drive expansion.

Maybe reconfigure your raidz as a 2-drive system, then copy over all your data into it, and expand it back into a 3-drive system after.

Probably a habit from when they really did have bad English, but they learned, and surpassed the average american at this point.

Just wanna throw in a voice saying your setup sounds completely fine to me. Maybe it’s a bit odd but it also sounds like how I’d do it if I had storage needs that large.

My current storage needs are currently met with a 2.5" SSD connected to a raspberry pi shared with samba over WiFi though so I’m pretty sure every storage nerd in here is gonna tell me my opinion doesn’t count, take it with a grain of salt.