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Expanding storage on simple home server
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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It depends on how important your data is to you. Me personally, I just run a jellyfin server with dubiously acquired tv shows and movies. Which is to say that if I lost everything in a catastrophic failure, I wouldn't much care, so I decided to get a refurbished 14tb USB connected external HDD.
If you run anything more important, you should listen to others who might have a more robust solution
I've considered this as well, as I already back my data up regularly. However, I read online that external disks aren't good for long-term access. Have you run into any issues with that?
External failure rates are hit and miss because frankly, they often get abused.
I've had some last for 10 years, other for 2, and I'm not kind to mine.
I'd say they have 2 issues to deal with: temp and being dropped. The cases have no cooling, and larger drives need greater cooling than smaller drives.
I currently have 2 external drives (4 TB each) I use for local redundancy. When sync happens, they get quite warm, so I keep an old 80mm case fan on them. These are 5 year old drives that have been running this way for 3 years. SMART doesn't report any errors or high temps, but without the fan I'm sure it would.
Like I said, I didn't buy it expecting it to last forever, but I haven't run into any problems yet and I've only had the drive for about a year now. We'll see how it holds up when it hits real long term numbers.