Recently obtained a free circa-2017 mac mini which I installed Linux on, to create a docker hosting environment. Current have Jellyfin, SearXNG, and Forgejo.

My much older NAS serves as the NFS drive for the Jellyfin media (formerly, I ran Plex directly on the NAS, but this was slow/unreliable as the NAS has only dual 1Ghz ARM cores).

One of the drives in the NAS died Thursday night, but no serious issue as its RAID 1. I wonder if the new load on it pushed it over the edge. (Also, I wonder if I could use the mac minis SSD as a sort of cache in front of the NAS, to reduce wear on it, if that would even help…)

Luckily I had some gift cards from recycling old tablets and phones, so I could get a replacement drive at minimal cost. I went with a cheap WD Blue drive instead of the 2.5x more expensive Seagate IronWolf drives I had used in the past. We will see how that fares over the next few years.

Upon replacing the drive yesterday, I found the one that failed was a 2017 mfg date, so its life was 8 years (from when I initially populated the NAS). The other drive was replaced in 2021 (but it actually failed in 2020, I just left the NAS unused for a year at that time, so it had a life of 3 years). Some insight into the life span of the Iron Wolf drives.

Things I’d like to add soon:

• kiwix instance
• normalize my ebook/magazine collection
• setup to download my youtube subscriptions to Jellyfin’s media directory so I can avoid the youtube app/website
• something for music to ditch that subscription

They would love if they can get you hooked on a monthly subscription for human thought

🤷‍♂️ ironfox exists