Hi all, a few months ago I got started with selfhosting. Installed Ubuntu Server on a HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Mini. It’s been great, running Jellyfin, Tandoor, Calibre-Web, and Miniflux. Everything is local access only.
The machine came with 1TB SSD and currently about 80% of that is taken. I’ve been searching around for good options to expand. While I’m relatively comfortable on the software side of things, I’m very inexperienced with and somewhat intimidated by hardware (but would love to learn a bit more).
What would be the most prudent way to expand storage? Is it simply replacing the existing SSD? Should I think of adding a NAS instead?
Buying new hardware would be ok, my only hard requirement is that I don’t want to run proprietary software/OS.
Add a second SSD, if the motherboard has a SATA port (I assume your current one is an NVMe drive). A SATA SSD is still more than fast enough as a second drive.
Moving to a bigger SSD also isn’t too difficult, as long as you have a system where you can have both the old and new SSD connected at the same time. It can be a different system if needed. Download Clonezilla onto a USB stick with Ventoy on it, and boot into it. Just make sure you have backups and do the clone in the correct direction (don’t clone the blank new drive onto the old one!!)
Thank you for the suggestion, I’ll have to open up the machine to see if the motherboard has a SATA port. Adding a second SSD doesn’t sound too hard assuming it is possible.
Probably has a pretty standard motherboard which most probably has SATA ports (looks like this on mine, the cables look like this and the PSU should have some spare power connectors). Once you have those, just plug in and you should be good to go. Not sure if SATA is hot-pluggable though; better to power off first.