I got into self hosting almost a year ago. Since then, I bought (low) hundreds of dollars worth of hardware, but I’ve never used any of my services outside of testing. My server is left unused since may (I think).

Now I’ve found a use for my server, but my HDD, (which I bought for a good price ($150 for HC530 14TB, 10k POH) for european standards in last November) isn’t really being used. To be frank, I never really used it, I don’t need a NAS, I always preferred (pirated) streaming services over local streaming, so I mostly had it just to have it.

I kinda know what I can do with it. I could set up a proxmox backups on it or run a nix cache (I run NixOS on my desktop PCs, I would be using the cache, but it would be annoying to set up and cachix free tier is enough for now).

I’m also anxious to use it, because I’m scared to wear it down, but, at the same time, I know that it will degrade if I don’t use it. I might want to sell it, but my previous sales on online marketplaces were abysmal and I know I might regret it if I change my mind and decide I need so much storage.

What would you suggest? If I want to keep it, how should I treat it?

  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusM
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    24 days ago

    I’d be more worried about not using it, personally.

    That said, storing videos isn’t the only use. I have a… fairly large NAS, and it has photos/videos I’ve taken (including the raws for some of my dslr photos), its the storage for my VMs, where my backups are stored (really a different NAS but appropriate for the discussion here) which are then backed up elsewhere as well, local git repos, etc, etc.

    Is streaming all you do? If so, no, you don’t need it.

    But if you do anything else, its a good place to store that data.

    • pmk@piefed.ca
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      24 days ago

      Just out of curiosity, how legal is this? Do you need to hide in complicated ways?

      • ThreeKnew@lemdro.id
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        24 days ago

        how legal is this?

        Not (depending on where you are). However, in my opinion it is absolutely ethical.

        Do you need to hide in complicated ways?

        Depends on where you are. For most people, yes you need to hide it, but it needn’t be complicated. You can just bind your torrent client to a (trustworthy) VPN.

        That said, these things always carry some risk, and that’s yours to take.

  • magnue@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Get a bunch of security cameras and have rolling 2 months of footage if u like. Or download the entire netflix library forever.

    • Helix 🧬@feddit.org
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      24 days ago

      download the entire netflix library forever.

      I’m pretty sure this is larger than 14TB?!

        • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
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          24 days ago

          I have around 130TB redundant and it wouldn’t equate to Netflix. Though I store in higher quality than most, but you’d need low quality like 720p utilizing h.265 or AV1 to save space to hold all that. Likely anything you download would be h.264 so you’d need to convert all that media too.

  • abcdqfr@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    Bought low? Sell high! Or will you somehow extract more value from it before it dies??

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    25 days ago

    Keep it spinning and put stuff on it, or sell it, probably for more than you paid for it. Drives on the shelf tend to fail.

    10K POH is a little more than a year, so it may still be under warranty.

    “Anxious to use it” in colloquial English means that you are eager or in a hurry to use it, btw. The opposite of being afraid to use it, which might be what you intended to say.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
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    24 days ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    Git Popular version control system, primarily for code
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

    3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

    [Thread #81 for this comm, first seen 18th Aug 2026, 12:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.uk
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    24 days ago

    If you’re not usng it for your own purposes, I doubt you’ll do what a bunch of strangers on Lemmy will tell you to do.

    It needs to be running, either in your possession, or someone else’s, so sell it and make some profit from the recent price rises. Put a minimum sell price on ebay and it’ll go eventually.

  • devaly@ani.social
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    24 days ago

    I bought like 4x12tb disks for 150 euros each at the time. I’m already using like 27tb

  • l3mming@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Back up as much of hugging face and/or civitai as you can before corporations lock it all down.

  • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com
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    25 days ago

    You could just use it as cold storage. Put a bunch of stuff on there as backup and then put it in a closet.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      25 days ago

      No.

      Cold storage is really “no storage”. A cold drive can’t tell you when an area of disk fails, or when the controller itself fails.

      May as well just throw away the data, because you have no idea how much will be there when you try to power it on.

      I have 8TB of data, and I get bit flips - if the drive were cold, I’d never know.

      And cold drives fail just as often as hot drives.

      • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com
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        24 days ago

        I didn’t mean to suggest it would be the only point of backup. If you plug it in and it works then it saves a lot of time downloading from some off-site backup.

  • gilokee@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Back up your digital photo library, download your favorite youtubers’ entire channels, get an offline version of wikipedia…there’s so much you can do! I wish I had 14TB lol, I only have like 3 right now. I’m running a jellyfin server and lyrion music server.