---
title: "Storage servers at home"
date: 2020-07-17T19:00:00+02:00
---

I was born in the 90s. I grew up with computers. Other generations call us "digital natives". I am lucky and proud to
work with computers every day with a database specialization. People tend to generate lots of data. It might be
administrative papers (bills, contracts, paychecks), sentimental photo albums or whatever the data is as long as it is
**their** data. At work, we pay attention to back up every data though it was the most important thing in the world. At
home, it should be the same but, in fact, nobody really cares about it unless the data is definitely gone.

My family members used to buy a single USB hard drive and regularly copy their data to it and think it is safe. This
highly depends on the frequency of the backup. Actually, they didn't copy very often. If the drive fails, they call me
to the rescue but I'm not a magician.

Another solution involves sending their data to "the cloud" because they have seen on TV this will solve all of their
problems. Cloud providers can, intentionally or unintentionally, leak their data. If we materialize data, I'm not sure
my family wants to send their physical storage cupboard to the United States for the sake of data safety. We live in
Belgium and France. There is no point of sending our data to the other side of the planet in someone else's hands.

So I decided to **self-host a set of storage servers at home** and offer this service to my own family. It has to be
simple as my parents will be the main users. I am a full-time employee and a proud dad. I have a little bit of time to
do the service maintenance. It is an opportunity for me to learn and share it to the world. Welcome to my self-hosting
project. I hope you will learn something too.
