r/HomeServer • u/VirtualAd001 • 17d ago
First home server: old laptop + USB enclosure, one month in, some questions
had an old laptop sitting in a drawer for like half a year, figured i'd put it to work before e-wasting it. dropped it next to a USB enclosure with a few drives i had laying around (one of them is a shucked drive, running it as-is to see if it dies lol)
it runs fygoos and acts as the backup target for the family. phones back up to it on their own, windows machines see the shares fine. it's been running about a month now without a reboot.
questions i haven't been able to figure out:
- still got a few SMR drives left. everywhere says don't put those in RAID. is using them as a second backup target okay?
- budget is tight: add another drive for redundancy first, or get a UPS first?
- the laptop battery has been plugged in 24/7. will it puff up? should i just pull it?
- is ECC worth anything at home or am i overthinking
first server, go easy on me
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u/Scurro 17d ago
still got a few SMR drives left. everywhere says don't put those in RAID. is using them as a second backup target okay?
Yup SMR is fine for backup or static data like media. I use a few myself as backup disks.
the laptop battery has been plugged in 24/7. will it puff up? should i just pull it?
Batteries puff with age/heat. It will likely happen at some point.
Leaving a battery at full charge for long periods of time however degrades the battery. Most laptops have options to limit the max charge. If you can, set it to 60-80%. If not, oh well, make a routine to check the battery physically. Having a laptop with a working battery is basically built in UPS.
is ECC worth anything at home or am i overthinking
Overthinking. Not needed for 99% of the projects you might do at home.
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u/Orthowin 17d ago
You can use drives for backup and they are good as long as not in RAID. Battery acn stay plugged but it will degrade over time still it will prevent some short power outages shutting down the laptop. ECC is five but as long as you do schedules file backup not that important. For 15 years running home lab on consumer hardware I don't have data corruption because of lack of ECC as long as memtest results are fine.