DosFreak wrote on 2026-02-16, 22:18:

https://wccftech.com/western-digital-has-no-m … acity-left-out/
I bought 13x 26TB WD drives (last year) instead of Seagate for my home server after only using Seagate for years. No issues.

The last time I needed to expand my home NAS, it was peak hard drive shortages and inflation due to the Chia farming in 2021. It's all very annoying.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-02-17, 00:37:

I am continuing my homelab project with some ... obsolete... parts.

I recently was gifted an MSI Z97A SLI Krait Edition, with an OLD i5, and 8GB of (DDR3) RAM. It has 2 16x PCIE slots, which will be adequate for the SAS HBAs I need to stuff in it...

Yikes. That's some serious language.

In my mind, my dual Irwindale with a stack of sata spinners in raid6 is still "current" - it is even running a bitcoin node as a hobby, just to keep itself busy. I replaced 3 disks that failed over the last 2 years.

I want to enable background block-level deduplication.

BEES (Best Effort Extent Same) is a FOSS 'compile it yourself from sources' daemon that does this for BTRFS, but it's very cpu and ram hungry.

https://github.com/Zygo/bees
(For the curious)

(Needs enough ram for its hash table, then computes and compares hashes of data written to the monitored disk(s) to see if it matches what's in the table. If it does, it leverages the COWFS features of BTRFS to write only file pointers to the already existing data, and reclaims the space that would have been allocated. This is a hungry process. I use a shellscript to monitor the size of its logfile, and trim it once it gets too big, along with a tmpfs location to store it and the hash table. The BEES daemon can run continually as a background process sensibly that way. Call memory compaction every 4 hours or so, for sanity.)

I want to fully leverage the array's potential, which is why I need a beefier filehead.

Makes total sense. My calibration is just off, maybe I’m stuck in the past.

I get it that btrfs can do block level dedupe, but I cannot help but wonder if file level deduping via hardlinks on ext4 would not get you 95% there? It can be done at a fraction of the cost.

Ultimately, I want to serve some iSCSI LUNs (which is why I have a very large number of ports on my gigabit switch. It can do channel bonding) to some application servers (that will go in the second rack), and rent out some virtual servers for low cost game hosting and such that way.

Having the LUN images get automagically deduped, because the underlying host has the dedupe agent running, should work quite slick.

At the mention of racks, I saw something the other day which might be of interest. That brand called Vevor have a 12U mini rack, marketed for audio/studio stuff, but it seems to be fairly cheap through various etailers, and is something to pile cheap blades into.

Doing a quick search, they've got other cheap frame racks and wall mounts etc. too. Maybe there are other sources of cheap rack stuff these days but when I was looking the other year, everything seemed to start at high 3 figures.

I got two fullsize racks FOR FREE last year. 😁

I'm building a homelab...

I scored some SAS disk shelves (full of disks), and a nice Dell blade-style switch off fleabay.

I just got a nice 4U rack enclosure for the filehead yesterday. I should update the thread...

wierd_w wrote on 2026-02-17, 15:17:

.
Having the LUN images get automagically deduped, because the underlying host has the dedupe agent running, should work quite slick.

Ah, in that case, it is needed. Will make a huge difference in total system performance too.

Someone finally said the quiet part out loud

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/st … payment-upfront

Maybe text editors will someday not take up multiple gigabytes of RAM and storage as a result of this.

Soon all processing power, media and storage will be hosted at a server farm and everything will go through your phone\TV.
You will own nothing.
It is already starting... See the AI thread.

Scary times....

I'll host my own 'cloud' first.

rmay635703 wrote on Today, 18:26:

Someone finally said the quiet part out loud

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/st … payment-upfront

"Pua says that 8GB eMMC modules, used across many consumer and automotive segments, rose from $1.50 to $20 last year alone, a 13x increase. Even at those inflated prices, they're still hard to come by, even for the likes of Phison"

Maybe at least now they will finally stop trying to turn cars and dishwashers into always online IoT devices

Munx wrote on Today, 19:43:

Maybe at least now they will finally stop trying to turn cars and dishwashers into always online IoT devices

^^THIS^^

It has gotten a little out of control

There's literally a wifi enabled toaster.... why?

Munx wrote on Today, 19:43:

rmay635703 wrote on Today, 18:26:

Someone finally said the quiet part out loud

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/st … payment-upfront

"Pua says that 8GB eMMC modules, used across many consumer and automotive segments, rose from $1.50 to $20 last year alone, a 13x increase. Even at those inflated prices, they're still hard to come by, even for the likes of Phison"

Maybe at least now they will finally stop trying to turn cars and dishwashers into always online IoT devices

Hey, you're right! That might be an upside of this. If products shift back to being simpler and less electronic that would be nice. Realistically, they'll find other ways to make them break often and be hard to repair, but at least a broken piece of plastic or a stripped out gear is easier to fix than a subscription service that has shut down or increased in price.

Or maybe the big corporations will just start building subscription based dish washing stations and putting them on street corners, opening up laundromats and renting out grocery store cooler space for an ever increasing monthly fee so we don't have the burden of owning our own appliances. Heck, we might as well just move into corporate run housing and rent everything from them. And really, at that point we might as well just work for them to pay for our accommodations. You know... why wait? I wonder if Foxconn is hiring...

tomcattech wrote on Today, 20:01:

There's literally a wifi enabled toaster.... why?

What else are you supposed to use to DDOS some server?

Munx wrote on Today, 20:32:

tomcattech wrote on Today, 20:01:

There's literally a wifi enabled toaster.... why?

What else are you supposed to use to DDOS some server?

The WIFI Lightbulbs and Dishwashers, oh we could use the WIFI washing Machines too and now that I think about it we can use all the WIFI doorbells, IP cameras, Vacuum Cleaners and the most ridiculous of all . .the WIFI BED.

Yes a WIFI enabled Bed that connects the internet.

They all link back to servers in China and I'm willing to bet their security is hot trash, I mean who would ever use a Lightbulb or a Toaster for a DDOS attack.

Funny side note.

Back when I was a teen my best friend's dad had a side gig owning\operating some vending machines throughout the area.

He would spend tons of time on the road going to different locations re-stocking even if some sites still had plenty of product.

I told him that they should have one with a modem that dialed in with a status report every day so he wouldn't waste his time.

He looked at me like I was insane..... Oh the missed opportunity....