this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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UPDATE: To everyone who suggested YUNO, thank you so much. This seems like it is about to make my journey much easier. It is basically almost exactly what I was looking for, but I was unaware that it existed.
Thank you ALL for your suggestions, actually. It's a bit overwhelming for an almost complete noobie but I an going to look into all of the suggestions in time. I just saw that there were several mentions of YUNO so I decided to make that one of the first things I investigated.

So, about two months ago, I had a very eye opening experience. As the result of a single misconfigured security setting on my Android, I was locked out of my Google Account on my phone AND all of my PCs. I had no access whatsoever to Google, or any of the literally hundreds of services that I get through Google.

This is when I realized that I relied entirely on Google/Android because those two days were actually very difficult, being cut off from media, services, passwords, everything, from the past almost twenty years of my life, could be taken away from me in an instant. The decades of my life that were locked away in my Google Account included hundreds of thousands of pictures, almost a hundred thousand audio tracks, several hundred books, several hundred apps, thousands of videos, etc. ad infinitum. Unfortunately, very little of this material was backed up at that point. That is my fault. Also, the misconfigured security setting was my fault as well.

The amount of data, media, memories, services, etc. that would have been lost is actually endless and it would have affected my life in several ridiculously negative ways.

Luckily, in the end, I was able to get my access back and then basically immediately grabbed all of the several terabytes of information and media of mine that they had, and that I was almost locked out of. I have it all in my house now on a drive in my computer, with a backup made on another disconnected disk.

I then decided that no corporation was ever going to have such an insanely high level of influence on and control over my entire life and my media ever again. That experience was actually very scary.

I've been trying to get into SelfHosting, but am finding it quite daunting and difficult.

There is a LOT of stuff that I have to learn, and I am mostly unsure of where to even begin. I know basically nothing about networking.

I need to learn the very basic stuff and work my way up from there, but everything that I've seen on the Internet assumes that the reader already has a basic to intermediate understanding of networking and the subjects that surround it. I do not, but I am going to learn.

I just need someone to show me where to start.

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unless you have experience with ethernet equipment and such it is probably better to start with some hosted service of an open-source app like Nextcloud or Immich or (slightly more advanced) a VPS somewhere. Doing it immediately from home with your own server has a steep learning curve.

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Thank you for the advice! After I get a firm grasp of the concepts at hand, I will look into NextCloud and Immich.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

In addition to what another poster said about getting an off-site backup hard drive, I would recommend looking into setting up a raid array for data redundancy with your online storage. You don't want one hard drive failure to make all of your data inaccessible.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 points 1 day ago

What exactly do you want to do? Just have storage that you upload all your media to, which is also backed up somewhere else?

[–] foodandart@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Yikes. Before you dip into any of the self-hosting, take and get a WD Gold drive - from Western Digital directly (wd.com) - do NOT go through Amazon or NewEgg or any third party merchant. Send in the warranty that goes with it and register the drive (this is for covering the off chance it's a DOA unit) Then get a good quality enclosure to pop the drive into and take your time and back up EVERYTHING onto that new HD.

Don't use an SSD.

You want a spinning platter drive, as this is backup only, so once it's full with all of your content, it gets dated and labeled and popped into a drawer for safe keeping. If you have countless terabytes of data, get more drives and swap them into the enclosure, date and incrementally fill. A fine tip sharpie to note what's on the drive is fine, or if you're obsessively anal about it, make a spreadsheet with that info.. If your drives are kept dry and stored with care they will last for DECADES..

The truth if being honest here - I'm a data hoarder and most of the stuff I've tucked away since I first came online (in 1999) is now on drives that I maybe spin up once a year. I used to have the notion that it was critical that all my shit was accessible all the time and I ended up dropping money on networked storage.. and over time, realized that as long as I knew where the files were, DID have the most important stuff - family photos and scans - tucked away not only in long term storage, but on multiple drives in multiple machines, (home, work, laptop) it was okay not have it served up instantly.

Just reading your post made me go cold inside - I can only imagine what you were going through until it got sorted. From a bonafide old school data hoarder.. Please, back your shit up locally. Use enterprise drives.

Then sort a self-hosting soultion.

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Several detailed, easy to understand and very good pieces of advice! Thank you! I have definitely saved your comment for referencing throughout this process!

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which software do you use for backups?

[–] foodandart@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I do my backups manually.

As I have run unsuported Mac installs for the last 20 years, I started a long time ago, automatically partitioning my OS drives and making storage volumes to work off of.

The storage volume in the computer will have subfolders for the type of data - music, video, photos, etc.

When my storage volumes fill, I will pull my latest backup drive out of storage, hook it up then go into each storage subfolder, sort by date and add everything that's newer than what's in the backup drive. (which is actually how Apple's Time Machine backups work - incrementally sorted by date - but I've had this method since the start, so I just stuck with it)

I just make sure to take note of how many files/folders I'm adding to the backup drive and note what it has at the start, then at the end, as a double-check of it all, before I clear the storage drive on the computer. (I did not do this and lost almost a years worth of music rips, waay back in 2003. Rebuilt the music I lost then iTunes threw a wobbler and lost the library for me. FML..)

The longest backup will ALWAYS be the initial one if you're dealing with a first time backup. The rest, once you work out how to organize your files, is academic.

What I've found is that your tastes will change, you grab content you think you'll want to hold onto forever.. and then years later, you realize it's low-bitrate, low-resolution, too pixellated.. whatever.. and you decide to delete it.

With the software doing the backups for you - it's too easy to just let it rip and go have dinner while it works and you end up with files that you'd otherwise get rid of. Part of being a data hoarder is not keeping everything forever. There's a ton of garbage online. Tastes change as you get older.. You want to curate that shit so you can keep what's most important - like family stuff.

And really good porn.

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Install Virtualbox (or some software to handle virtual machines).
Install Debian (or some other OS of your choice, I won't judge if you prefer Windows).
Update your OS (apt update && apt upgrade -y on Debian).
Take a snapshot of your VM's current state after updating. Saves a lot of time if you mess up or want a clean slate.

Now you decide on what you want. Do you want to install n8n or Node-RED for automation? Do you want to use Immich for pictures? Paperless to save papers in a digital format? Audiobookshelf to listen on your books or podcasts? Jellyfin to stream your media? Set up a Minecraft or Factorio server?

Once you have decided on what you want to do, try to do it in your virtual machine.
Once you understand how to set it up and configure it to your liking, decide on how you want to host it. I took an office computer, added a few HDDs and replaced the case with a bigger one and it's now my home server, but any old laptop will do. Just make sure to take backups.

I used to have a Dell R710 and a virtual machine for each service I hosted, but I have moved to docker because it as simple as taking the often provided compose file, tweaking it a bit (where to store data etc) and running it with docker compose up -d.

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's a great idea to run it in a VM first, because I'm bound to make mistakes along the way. Awesome advice! I'm definitely going to be referencing your comment throughout the process! Saved!

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I had a Raspberry Pi once and wanted to move file from the current folder to some other folder. I typed mv /* /path/to/folder/ and move everything in the root directory and down to this other folder.

EDIT: Meant to say that snapshots are cheap backups. I ended up reinstalled the OS.

Correct would have been dot slash: mv ./* /path/to/folder/

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I'd recommend starting by hosting a nextcloud instance.

  1. Get a desktop computer, pretty much anything will do but having room to add more HDD is important.
  2. Install Linux distro like Ubuntu or something
  3. Get a static IP so your IP doesn't change
  4. Setup a router port forwarding rule so that an outside address points to your nextcloud instance.

Then do some optional steps:

  • Automatically turn on PC when power comes back on (BIOS setting)
  • Startup script that runs nextcloud on startup
  • Install docker to manage services like nextcloud
  • Add some remote desktop thingy to manage your server from your laptop (ssh is also good but a steeper learning curve)
  • Get a NAS for storing data with redundancy.
  • Have some other form of backup like your current Google account, cloud provider or one of your mates with a similar setup.

That's pretty much what you need to start hosting your own files, then later on you can setup a email server, media server like Jellyfin, homepage and everything.

Just go one step at a time and when you hit an issue you can and should ask Google or ChatGPT. Remember, everything exposed to the Internet is vulnerable so take security seriously. Always have everything protected by a decently long password, pairing requirement with your server confirming adding a device or an API key.

[–] SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

get your password situation squared away! every time i spin something new up i am grateful to have a pw manager to keep it all unique and maximum character limit

don't even have to memorize the user of a lot of em

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's the only thing that I do have taken care of! I basically immediately grabbed them out of Chrome and put them in KeePassXC on my PCs and KeePassDX for my Android.

Baby steps!

[–] quokka1@mastodon.au 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

@MTZ @SidewaysHighways You may wish to disable all browser password managers, on all devices and use an alternate method of password management that suits your needs.
This is a cautionary tale on browser password managers (amongst other facepalms) that saw about millions of people's personal details stolen - https://www.oaic.gov.au//_/_data/assets/pdf/_file/0037/228979/Medibank-data-breach-alleged-timeline-infographic.pdf

[–] oeuf@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Check out YUNOhost - it's pre-configured for you and designed for beginners. Mine's been running for about three years on a VPS with no problems and I had no previous experience with self-hosting.

Definitely keep your files backed up locally though. No server is invincible.

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I will certainly look into that. I've never heard of YUNOhost but I'm going to give it a look soon!

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[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That econdary drive I highly recommend you find a way to move that out of your house. For me I have a friend 8 hours away, we swap drives on occasion to keep each other's backups in case of flood/fire/toddler or whatever other force of nature to save ourselves cloud backup costs

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's a great idea. I've had a safety deposit box for years. I can just store it in there!

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Safe deposit box is exactly the right size to hold a 3.5" HDD. Or several. I keep a backup Yubikey there too, because I love the physical token 2FA, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose it.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think the very first step to building resiliency is to sign up for Proton's cloud services. That will give you access to mail, both from Gmail via forwarding and a new inbox with a separate address. You'd also get a password manager and cloud storage. From there you can start self-hosting alternatives. Probably start with Immich as Google Photos is a big deal and it takes a ton of storage. Proton is a Swiss non-profit so the probability for enshitification is not nearly as high as with Google.

As soon as you have redundant storage, do a Google Takeout and download a full archive of your stuff. This feature may not be there for long given the current corporate climate.

[–] MTZ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks, I will certainly look into this after I get some sort of basic understanding of the concepts at play.

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