I’m new to selfhosting and I find myself rarely using the server, only when I need to retrieve a document or something.
I was thinking of implementing something to make it power on, on demand, but I’m not sure if this might be harmful for the HDDs, and I’m not sure how to implment it if so.
What’s your recommendation to do so? I’m running a dell optiplex 3050
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Wake-on-LAN is probably what you want, if your specific hardware supports it which it probably does. This is a case of figuring out your exact hardware and a little RTFM-ing about how to enable and use WOL.
As for the drives it, in theory, would add more load/unload cycles to them and thus reduce their lifespan. But, in the real world, that almost certainly doesn’t matter, unless you’re turning the system on and off every 5 minutes: modern drives expect to go in and out of power saving modes and most controllers (especially usb enclosures!) do this pretty aggressively, so a couple more load cycles more-or-less are unlikely to actually cause your drive to fail any quicker than it would anyways.
Thank you
I think it has wake on Lan, so that means any connection attempt would wake it?
Not quite. Wake on LAN requires a special packet be sent, the OS to boot, then you can attempt to connect to whatever’s running.
It’s fairly manual (though you COULD maybe automate it, if you have other infrastructure that’s watching for things: ex. using home assistant to send the packet when you come home), and has a delay since the system has to boot before it’ll respond to anything.