Servers & routers

I was recently at the computer store, and I was asking about setting up a personal server. I hope to eventually use this with an /e/ account, and it would be helpful at the moment to avoid dealing with cloud services that have an extremely limited amount of space before they want to start charging you monthly fees to host your data on their cloud.

From reading online, servers consist of setting up another computer “headless,” and attaching a larger hard drive to it. This machine stays connected online at all times, and is the personal device that houses all of your “cloud” data.

In the computer store yesterday, the salesman was describing a server that involves plugging an external hard drive into a router, via its usb port. While this seems far more simple than setting up a headless computer, I also wonder regarding the limitations of such a situation. Could someone more knowledgeable regarding server storage explain this in more detail? I would, naturally, prefer to be more in control of how I host my data, as opposed to picking a quick and easy setup that doesn’t offer as much autonomy. Thank you!

Funny that you should ask that now. This evening I started writing down my experiences with selfhosting. While it is at the moment a rough draft with lot of details missing which will require some time to write, the text starts with:

I have the feeling that more people, especially in this community, try to reclaim their privacy. For me privacy also means to have a place under my control where I store my private data. Now it has been more than five years that I started to selfhost my own private data. So I believe sharing my experiences, struggles and thoughts during this process with this community might perhaps be helpful.

Now to your question: It depends on what you want to achieve. Having an external harddisk plugged in your router means (based om my experience with my own router) that you can access the files on that harddisk remotely. If that is all you want, then it is good and you should go for it.
If you want to host specific services (like for example remote access to your own address-book, or an E-Mail archive) then you depend on the functionality of your router. If the router does not provide this functionality, then a more sophisticated setup is required.

1 Like

@veeve01 the thing you are inquiring is NAS (Netwotk Area Storage) its hard drive which is shared on LAN or it can be on WAN .and now it upto you which type of server you want if yiu give details of that server may be i can help you

@saqlain I am looking for something which would allow me to store and access files remotely. This would include emails, address books, and other apps on a phone that handle private data.

For example, I currently use apps for school, which involve writing and editing documents. The app has a built in storage capacity, where I can connect it to a cloud server, such as google drive or iCloud, and these files, along with their edits, are stored in the cloud. I can then go home, and open this same file on my computer, and the edits that I made previously during the day are updated on the file that I access from my computer.

Then there’s the more basic function of hosting files on it, that I can potentially send links to another person and they can access said file. For example, someone recently sent me a link to a very large audio file that would have been way too large to send via email. I was able to click on the link and download said file, and no data had to be compressed as the size of the file wasn’t a problem. All of the regular cloud services offer these types of options.

What I am not interested in, is operating a server to the degree that I would be hosting a website, and have a lot of traffic accessing the information. I may be interested in that at some point, but at the moment, that’s beyond what I’m wanting to do.

That would be a very cool idea for a blog! I think that could be very informative for people wanting more control over their data.

then sir go for this
https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/network-attached-storage

surelly it will help you .if not then we will go for SAN

1 Like

Yup I was just reading about NAS. Educating myself on all of this is only showing me how involved things can get… but it’s good to do before actually spending any money on things.

I’m using 2 SoC for hosting. For hosting my own cloud server I’m using a cubitruck with one ‘internal’ 1 GB sata and one 2GB USB HD. The OS is armbian. For file and picture sync I have setup a seafile server on it. And for Calender and Adressbook sync I have setup a Nextcloud server on it. Via no-ip.com I have access from outside.
The second SoC is a lattepanda with pure debian installed. On this device I’m running a matrix server.

I think that’s the easiest and cheapest way to host your data for your own.

1 Like

Hello you can use http://kettop.com/ product for Fw and home hosting.
In synology product they add docker to easily add apps
But home hosting is not really easy if you are not curious ans want to learn
Keep un mind to backup ans understand how restore, yours data config etc…

1 Like

Thank you all for the informative replies! I now have more specific directions for my research.

When I first came across this project, I had never handled an android phone, much less flashed one with a different operating system. The ideology behind this project has inspired me to teach myself far more about tech and how our data is handled. Much of this is still in the works, when I’m ready to start setting up my own personal data hosting, I will certainly post updates on things.

Thanks again everyone for your informative input!

1 Like

After further research, openmediavault looks interesting, and it can be installed on a raspberry pi. They connect via ethernet to your router, and then you can attach up to 4 external usb harddrives. The openmediavault software appears to support lots of other software, including seafile as well as nextcloud. Has anyone else had any experience with openmediavault? The options look easy to setup from what I can tell, and the external harddrives would be the most expensive part.