Trying to undestand the specifics of the read-only rootfs

Not very, but I don’t have a number for you. I would also guess that more complex configurations would be larger…

Check the forum for various scripts. In the past their was one that could be cron’ed, and save current configuration to a data pool. There is also the Multi-Report script that both mails status of your TrueNAS, and sends a copy of the configuration as well.