I created my first selfhost using an old PC with an i3 8100 and 16GB DDR4, a 250GB hard drive for the OS, and two 4TB hard drives. I deliberately didn’t use the RAID feature for various reasons. Software RAID works as long as the software works, and hardware RAID (MOBO) works as long as the machine doesn’t crash. It’s also true that you can find an identical MOBO and save the RAID. But precisely because I wanted to be safe, I created a menu that appears every time I connect to the SSH terminal, which automatically appears after logging in. It has the following options: 1. Start backup (using rsync), 2. Shut down the NAS securely (this is useful for my wife and daughter because they can’t shut it down because they’re not root users), and 3. Exit (exits the terminal).
This way, once I’ve uploaded with immich, I launch the backup, and once the process is complete, I get a notification that I can turn it off.
I don’t need to keep it on all the time for home use. Instead, I use it purely for photo/video backup, and if one disk fails, there’s no problem; the other is a mirror image but independent, and can be connected to any PC. The only thing it takes is just 2 minutes to launch the backup (I do it at night and turn it off in the morning).
Oh, I forgot, because I can turn it on when needed. I connected the PC to a smart plug, set automatic power on in the BIOS… And that’s it.