Or is this a bad idea?
Reading through !selfhosted, I think I have found a new hobby. I have an old laptop HP ProBook 450 G5 4WU81ES.
16gb ram, solid CPU, shitty integrated gpu, and only 256gb ssd. Barely enough for system and some apps. Battery life maybe 30min unplugged so I take it as an UPS.
So the question again is, can I have permanently plugged external hdd to use as extension for this purpose?
It will work really well, but the difference between a laptop and a server is operational longevity. Laptops are meant to work for workloads for a few hours, whereas dedicated servers can work 24/7 for years sometimes because of how they are made and tested.
However, if the intensity of workload is light, a laptop can also run for a few months provided temps are well maintained. My tiny RPi ran for a few months till I manually shut it down.
Also, backups and backups.
…for a couple months? Huh, I’ve got a rpi 4 and the little bastard has been running “almost nonstop” for 3 years and a half. And he is still kicking.
I love my Pi too much to let it run for so long 🥰
Plus I don’t have a power backup; uptime is only as good as my power (which goes out once every 4 months)
Just for fun I thought I’d check the uptime of the server I’m logged into at work. 1391 days.
That sounds like a security nightmare.
well, yes and no. It’s definitely behind on updates, but it’s running linux and isn’t web facing. Security is outsourced to the firewalls/IDS etc. If someone is trying to hack it, they’re already past the firewalls so we’re fucked by default even if the server is 100% secure.