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?
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That’s a helium filled drive, so it’s got a limited lifespan whether it’s running or not. I would at least set it up as a NAS and use it to store your backups.
There’s no ‘wearing it down’ - age is age.
If anything, unpowered drives die faster because lubricants slowly harden over time. Ah least a running drive is unlikely to suffer that fate.
Also, any drive can lose magnetic cohesion on areas of the platter - with a running drive that’s maintained by a system like ZFS, these areas of magnetic loss can be automatically discovered and corrected.
Everything I’ve read (and from my own anecdotal experience) drives on a shelf die every bit as frequently as running drives, if not more often.
But in the end, don’t go doing anything just because you feel like “you have to”. I have a dozen smaller drives (500GB to 1 TB) that are just waiting for a purpose. I have a plan for them, but it’s not urgent. Eventually they’ll go in a Proxmox/TrueNAS/UnRAID box, when I can find a motherboard for the right price with low power draw (the drives will be the worst power consumer anyway).
Mirror a couple TB of anna’s archive
I always preferred (pirated) streaming services over local streaming
I suggest having a backup of some of your favourite media anyway. You never know when a service will be taken down.
What services are you using, if you don’t mind me asking?
Sell it. Buy beer. If you start to regret it, drink the beer.
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.
save everything you like from the internet. nothing lasts including youtube videos
You could just use it as cold storage. Put a bunch of stuff on there as backup and then put it in a closet.
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.
Run a Peertube.
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.
I can take some of those off your hands arrh