using rsync:

why not btrfs send | btrfs receive? is there some advantage to rsync?

did you hotswap the drives after each btrfs replace or shutdown and then swap?

what’s your host OS and do the drives spin down if inactive?

thanks for the writeup!

I’ve set up a local mail archive with just dovecot + imap plugin. you don’t need the full mail server with postfix and whatnot, as it’s not intended to send anything anywhere, or even receive anything for that matter. it just sits there ready to be searched with thunderbird, no need for other complex solutions you’ve mentioned.

correct, no idea how I managed to do that.

you’re overcomplicating it. get a separate $20 SSD and install the OS to it, dicking around with wine and tools within virtualbox is a headache you don’t need. set it up as desired (I recommend using flatpak versions of lutris and friends because of freshness) and then install the games one by one, followed by transferring the game data/settings/etc. you can experiment to your heart’s desire because you always have the fallback solution of your original drive.

then, when you know what’s what and where’s what you can make the transition. good luck!

I wanted to write the same thing. have the notes app do the notes thing and handle encryption elsewhere.

as to apps, I suggest QOwnNotes. it’s markdown, highly configurable so you can make it minimalistic AF, stores notes in invidual files and folders. it also has a bunch functionality like syncing to nexctcolud and such, but I’d advise against it, just use it as a notes editor. you don’t have to selfhost anything, make it use the e.g. Documents/Notes folder and you can use syncthing to securely replicate it to other devices.

friend should nuke this crapware and use syncthing for such activities. if they happen to run jellyfin, they can use it to serve books as well, and by utilising the OPDS plugin it would allow compatible readers (e.g. Librera) to directly download books/comics to the device in a shop-like interface.

awesome! now onwards to romsfun, 1337x, etc. and figure out how to install, transfer, archive, etc. then you get to upgrade the disk and so on, barrels of fun await!

sure, that’s also viable. I just never had the console experience, so was inclined to share.

come to think of it, I tried it a few months back but it was pretty slow (tried RDR1 on a R5 5600/RX 570 with Fedora 40 KDE). supposedly it’s way better now

yeah, that was a big dissapointment that it supports only like three FW versions, and even then it’s a tethered JB. but, that would be an awesome machine, very competent hardware, supports large disks, SSDs make a huge difference, newer gen hardware so way less heat related deaths, etc.

the way I understood it is CFW allows all models to play PS2 games. I tried God of War and some Tekken, forgot which, started up without issues. I also have some settings to upscale PS2 games, don’t know if that’s a CFW thing or if that’s standard.

also, some fat models have real PS2 hardware in them, so no need for emulation.

straight out of the “silicon valley” timeline, I can practically see Jian-Yang pitching it

anyone up to date with jailbreaking a PS4? I’ve read that only 11.0 can be liberated, whereas the current version is 11.52. seems unlikely I’d find one in the wild that stopped being updated at precisely that version…

the parts are cheap, the prices are low

well yeah, just a simple private/public key solution for encrypting chat and cloud. transfer your private key to a forked desktop app and access your encrypted chat history from there as well.

just basic stuff, not something for people running from nation-state actors, but to prevent LLM ingestion and mass surveilance. but OP says that’s against Telegram’s ToS, so no dice here.

because Telegram’s UI/UX is second to none; possibly iMessage or whatever it’s called is close, albeit with way limited functionality. Signal and friends look like a PoC from 2015 in comparison. also the apps, on mobile and on desktop, have a low memory footprint with no bloated electron crap, the cross-device sync is phenomenal and there’s the virtually unlimited cloud storage. if an addon could piggyback off of that, that would be spectacular.

however, OP’s insight as to this being against ToS is obviously a deal breaker. seeing as how they’re adamant about leaving all your shit unencrypted in the cloud I’m looking for other havens, begrudgingly; I’ve been a user from the early days.

do any of these forks support E2EE? I don’t mean the OG “private chat” thingy that Telegram supports.

I mean like an add-on, the way pidgin had an OTR plugin that enabled private comms over Google’s unencrypted XMPP servers.

as a consequence, that would also encrypt everything in the cloud and prevent your chat history being ingested for LLM training and whatnot.

first off, if you plan to scan the storage for bad “sectors”, that’s gonna take eons if the disk is of any considerable size. what’s more likely is you running the SMART self-test and that will work over any medium.

the cables absolutely can and do cause corruption, whether it’s plain SATA-SATA cables or the USB-SATA with their own controller on it; however, if you don’t have reason to suspect this particular cable/adapter is faulty, it’s not a worry vector per se.

any mods around? what’s this bullshit have to do with programming?

I have acknowledged that they’re that, but that’s not what OP asked for - they asked for a cheap setup (which the minis ain’t) and they intend to run a servarr instance, which implies large storage and those are both difficult and not cheap to cram into said minis.

I don’t understand the fascination of other commenters with mini-PCs, as the mini-ness was mentioned nowhere in the OP.

any used and decomissioned old office PC, any i5/i7 is way more powerful than you’ll need for that setup. you get everything you need right in the box and you can cram it full with cheap RAM and hard disks. you get to repurpose something that’s useless as a desktop workstation and not buy more future e-waste.

yes, the mini-PCs and the Rpis are more power efficient, but the operating costs of a $30-50 PC don’t come close to the price of buying one of these mini-things, not to mention - figuring out how to run large hard disks with it.