It's A Digital Disease!

The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/RajSingh9999 on 2025-04-27 20:45:18.

Couple of years ago, I got GIGABYTE BRIX mini PC with Celeron Processor J4105. The machine details can be found on its home page here.

It basically has following relevant specifications:

• Front IO:
  • 1 x USB3.0
  • 1 x USB3.0 type C
• Rear IO: 2 x USB 3.0
• Storage: Supports 2.5" HDD/SSD, 7.0/9.5 mm thick (1 x 6 Gbps SATA 3)
• Expansion slot
  • 1 x M.2 slot (2280_storage) PCIe X2/SATA
  • 1 x PCIe M.2 NGFF 2230 A-E key slot occupied by the WiFi+BT card

Currently I have following things installed:

• Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
• 8 GB DDR4 RAM. CPU-Z says following for the RAM:
  • Total Size: 8192 MB
  • Type: DDR4-SDRAM
  • Frequency: 1197.4 MHz (DDR4-2394) - Ratio 1:12
  • Slot #1 Module - P/N: CB8GS2400.C8JT

I am embarking my journey to configure this machine as my central storage server. I have currently following use cases in mind:

• Download youtube videos / playlists / channels
• Sync photos and documents from onedrive / google drive
• Download movies / TV shows from torrent
• Store some big datasets for machine learning tasks

I have following doubts:

1. Is the configuration of this mini PC fine, or it is not sufficient?
2. What hardware upgrades should/can I do to make it more capable?
3. Is 8 GB RAM enough? or Should I add another 8 GB RAM stick?
4. What storage upgrade is recommended? Currently I can think of following options:
   • Add m.2 NVME and install OS on it, for faster speed. Will it be faster than having OS on SATA SSD?
   • Get rid of 500 GB SATA SSD and replace it with 4TB SATA HDD. Is it worth it?
   • I find internal 2.5 inch internal HDDs quite costlier than 3.5 HDDs. So, instead of sticking to internal drive, will it make sense to buy external hard drive bay like Orico 5 bay and use 3.5 inch HDDs with it? Will it be slower if I connect it to USB 3.0?
5. Apart from hardware front, I also have software related doubt. I am able to setup qBitTorrent WebUI on this machine and access it over Internet. I am in process of setting up TubeArchivist on this machine, by running Docker on Windows. I am thinking I will also need to run Sonarr and Radarr docker on this machine. I already have OneDrive and GoogleDrive clients running. Next I may try setting up Emby or Kodi. My doubt is I am planning to do all this on Windows. Do I need to look for dedicated OS like TrueNAS? What benefit it will provide?

PS: I am a noob data hoarder.