I have my old PC that I force to do whatever I want now 24/7. I call it the Shitbox™ since it's not glamorous. So I'm desperate for things to do with it. I thought, maybe suck up some large games from Steam and keep them in bulk storage on the NAS and move them over to main PC when the need arises. Also other ideas for my Shitbox™ are appreciated.

PS. Please, comment on my grammar also, I might be dyslexic and I'm a non-native English speaker and I wanna get better.

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Originally posted by u/kelakakku on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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Dipping my toes into the realm of homelabbing and would like the experienced eyes of this subreddit on the hardware list that I've put together. I've read the wiki sections on software and hardware (and asked ChatGPT some stuff), so I have some basic understanding of what I'm trying to accomplish and how to do it.

My goals are, in order of priority, hosting a Plex server for my home and sharing with friends and family, setting up a Raspberry Pi for Pi-Hole, and file hosting that can be accessed remotely to combine my local/Google Drive/OneDrive/iCloud storage. I understand the Pi is all separate hardware-wise from this, so not related to this post.

I have plenty of experience building PCs for gaming but I'm not sure how the performance requirements of server hosting translate. Please feel free to recommend cheaper/better options for hardware. I'd like to stay under $1,500 and my current part list is ~$1,320. Thanks for the help.

PCPartPicker List

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Originally posted by u/sneff30 on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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Anyone have a U8-423? I’m looking for internal pictures. Thinking about picking one up and swapping the MoBo out curious about what’s in there.

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Originally posted by u/Simple-Duty-9135 on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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I am looking at purchasing a PowerEdge r620. I am wanting to be able to run multiple VMs which will include Active Directory server, couple of SQL servers. Maximum of 3-4 running at the same time. I plan to install Proxmox. Based on these specifications would this be enough power for my purposes with the plan to add more?

PowerEdge Dell R630 Server | 2X E5-2690 v4 = 28 Cores | 128GB RAM | 2X 1TB SSD

https://a.co/d/cPjMU1j

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Originally posted by u/drayth86 on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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https://preview.redd.it/8id3de89hqoe1.png?width=830&format=png&auto=webp&s=7011860c3286e46e2f51af97f659bf2a02b6b265

Hi everyone,

This is my current setup, as shown in the image. I want to take it a step further by securing certain VMs like Nextcloud and Gitea. I’ve already set up WireGuard, and it’s working well.

My question is: Is there a way to restrict access to these VMs so that only users connected to my WireGuard VPN can access them, while preventing public access? Currently, they are exposed to the internet.

I’d appreciate your thoughts and suggestions!

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Originally posted by u/the_learning_lad on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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Are you even a true tech enthusiast if you don’t travel with a fully virtualized homelab? Enter my GMKTek N97-powered travel server: a 12GB RAM, 512GB HDD, 4TB of external SSD storage beast that will probably never see 5% CPU utilization, but hey, it’s there when I need it. Running Proxmox, because of course, and serving up Plex, network-wide ad blocking, and whatever other services I can justify running while sipping an overpriced airport coffee.

The Hardware: "Because I Could"

You could say this machine is overkill. You’d be right, but I won’t acknowledge it. With an Intel N97, this bad boy is basically a supercomputer (if you squint really hard and ignore benchmarks). It pairs beautifully with a GL.iNet travel router, ensuring that I can overcomplicate my networking on the go. Oh, and let’s not forget the 4TB TeamGroup QLC SSD dangling off a USB 3.0 port—because nothing says "reliability" like a giant external drive balancing precariously in a backpack.

For scale, you’ll notice a quarter in the picture. Not because you needed it, but because nothing screams 'this is serious tech' like an everyday object for reference. That quarter has been through a lot—probably more than this server will ever be asked to do.

The Services: Because Simplicity is for Quitters

• Plex: Who needs streaming services when you have a personal Netflix-in-a-box? And thanks to hardware-based transcoding, even my most absurdly large 4K files stream like butter, assuming my travel router doesn’t throw a tantrum.
• Network-wide Ad Blocking: Because even hotel Wi-Fi pop-ups should bow to my will.
• Miscellaneous Overengineering: Various services that I don’t technically need, but let’s pretend they’re essential.

The Reality: Just Because You Can...

In practice, my travel server spends most of its time waiting for me to do something interesting with it. But when that moment arrives—when I absolutely must stream a 4K movie from my own library in the middle of nowhere—I’ll be ready.

Is this all unnecessary? Yes. Will that stop me from packing it up and bringing it on every trip? Absolutely not. Because if a tech blogger doesn’t bring an entire home lab on vacation, did they even travel at all?

(Also, this post was partially written by AI. Because if I’m going to let a machine handle my ad-blocking, media streaming, and networking, I might as well let it handle my jokes too.)

// person here. Thought it would be fun to have ChatGPT write a humorous tech blog. yes, I will be traveling with it.

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Originally posted by u/geosmack on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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Hey everyone, I shucked my Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB External HDD hoping that the internal SATA to USB adapter could be used for another SATA drive I have. Picture shows the opened casing, I removed the shielding tape and used the adapter but it has a motherboard which seems to restrict it to work only with the Seagate drive.

Unfortunately, when I plugged it into my PNY 2.5” drive, nothing popped up.

Hoping that someone knows how to make it work universally? I was trying not to buy a SATA to USB adapter because it would take a few days for delivery and I want to use the PNY drive today

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Originally posted by u/BruhJr on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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I recently got a pCloud subscription to back up my neurotically tagged and organised music collection.

pCloud says a couple of things about backing up folders from your local drive to their cloud:

(pCloud) Sync is a feature in pCloud Drive. It allows you to connect locally-stored folders from your PC with pCloud Drive. This connection goes both ways, so if you edit or delete the files you’re syncing from your computer, this means that you'll also be editing them or deleting them from pCloud Drive.

That description and especially the bold part leaves me less than confident that pCloud will never edit files in my original local folder. Which is a guarantee I dearly want to have.

As a workaround, I've simply copied my music folder (C:\Users\\Music) to the virtual P:\ drive created by pCloud (P:\My Music). I can use TreeComp for manual one-way syncing, but that requires I remember to sync manually regularly. What I'd really like is a tool that automatically updates P:\My Music whenever something changes in C:\Users\\Music, but will 100% guaranteed never change anything in C:\Users\\Music.

Any tips? Thanks in advance!

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Originally posted by u/midnightrambulador on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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Today I was given an IBM 3590 tape cartridge by someone completely else to the person that gave me the 3592 tape cartridge but it still came from the same PGS geographical company as the 3592 cartridge which now I am very curious to see what the data is on there assuming I can decode the .TAR format into files, the person also had a few 3590 tape drives at their job which were unfortunately signed off for recycling and they are to be sent off to another country to be scrapped out which means I can’t have a single one of them :( or go to the recycling company’s place and buy one from them which is a shame as I have a video of one operating that I took before they loaded them up onto a lorry (truck for the UK people) and took them, I cried a little knowing these pieces of history are wasted, I did try to offer £40 for one but they didn’t budge on it citing the contract has been signed and not being able to go back on it.

The IBM 3590 was a format that replaced the IBM 3490 tape series and was eclipsed by the IBM 3592 which had much higher storage capacities up to 50TB, speeds and drive density as these IBM 3590 drives took up a lot more space while the IBM 3592 was a full height 5.25” drive which means it could fit inside of a PC bay provided you bend the tabs out inside (these tabs are there to help guide half height 5.25” drives into the bay as most common consumer drives and accessories are half height) to allow the full height drive to fit in the 2 5.25” bays, these types of drive were intended to be used in a mainframe application with rows upon rows of tapes that are picked and chosen by robots to be placed into the tape drives for data backup, humans aren’t meant to touch or see any of these tapes with the exception of expired cleaning cartridges which are deposited into a box to be collected and replaced with new ones, there are also calibration cartridges which are only used for when a new tape drive is put into service or in the event of a read/write error to be able to recalibrate the heads and tape mechanism.

The IBM 3590 tape cartridges came in 3 different generations which is further split into 2 lengths where one is a standard length “High Speed” data cartridge and an extended length “High Speed” data cartridge, the types are as follows:

3590-B

10GB standard length “High Speed” data cartridge (this is what I have)

20GB extended length “High Speed” data cartridge

3590-E

20GB standard length “High Speed” data cartridge

40GB extended length “High Speed” data cartridge

3590-H

30GB standard length “High Speed” data cartridge

60GB extended length “High Speed” data cartridge

Here is a video of it operating which shows the marvel of engineering that was unfortunately scrapped (16 of them D: ), it had pneumatic tubes feeding to many parts of the tape drive to keep the tape stuck to the walls as the tape needed to be tight on the heads to ensure good reads and writes moving back and forth at high speeds and to operate the arm that pulls the tape media around the mechanism and to the drive spool (you can even hear a slight hiss as the arm makes its way around the drive), the design stuck around on the 3592 and IBM LTO tape drives but was motorized instead of being pneumatic which is why it was very loud.

The inner workings of an IBM 3590 tape drive complete with sound - GIF - Imgur

Thank you for reading this Friday‘s post and I hope you have a great day, if you have any queries, thoughts about the format, additional information or to point out a mistake, please put them in the comments :)

Link to previous post, post 17 (36th week): My data storage mediums, post 17 (36th week) : r/DataHoarder

Link to future post, (To be posted)

The cartridge on my wall

The cartridge up close, not shown is the very cool font used on the barcodes which I wish I could have taken a photo of before this post

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Originally posted by u/LaundryMan2008 on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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I was reading some comments in my last post.

One thing stood out in particular: people are wanting me to fix my power supply issue

If you hadn't seen it was essentially just the pile of power supplies sitting on the desk. I have now updated that by putting them between each computer (see second image). They run cool enough that I'm hoping it won't be an issue

Let me know if you have any other recommendations!

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Originally posted by u/AndyIsHereBoi on Reddit.com/r/homelab

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Hey everyone!

Apologies if this isn’t the right place to ask, but I need a little advice on the easiest way to go about backing up my old computer (which has developed some disk issues in recent months with both the boot drive and an internal HDD). To not bore everyone with the details, there have been error messages/indications that a disk failure is imminent and I would like to back up everything from both drives to avoid data loss since I have some important stuff on there.

I was thinking I could maybe back up both drives onto a single 4TB HDD. However, I am unsure how feasible that would be as one of the drives has a Windows installation and the other is additional storage. What do you all think the best solution would be? I have important project files on both drives so I’m at a bit of a loss for how to best go about this.

Thanks for reading! :)

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Originally posted by u/ghostpicnic on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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Hey folks! First time contributor here looking for some insight into a backup need I have.

My current backup situation is a single USB SSD that stores my active projects, which I backup to a Hard Drive. It's not exactly a full backup at the moment, as non-active jobs are only saved onto the backup drive. I'm hoping to get a second drive to RAID 1 with the main backup once I have a bit more money.

Onto my issue- I'm looking for a backup software on MacOS that will only add and replace existing files on the backup, not delete ones that don't match. That way I can keep moving files from the working SSD onto the backup drive, while still being able to clear off space on the working SSD.

I think that makes sense? Let me know if I need to clarify better!

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Originally posted by u/PM_ME_TINY_PIANOS on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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