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?

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    20·
    12 hours ago

    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).