Building my own NAS taught me why prebuilt enclosures are holding you back
…Sign in to your XDA account After looking at my current home lab setup, it's sometimes hard to imagine I was firmly in the prebuilt network-attached storage (NAS) camp. It…
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A $40 label maker and QR codes completely changed how I manage my home lab
…Encoding a public IP would be a security risk, and a serial number alone wastes the QR code's potential. 04 / 8 Networking When labeling a patch panel in a home lab…
I let two local LLMs fight over how to optimize a Linux VM, and they destroyed it instead
…fake security," which... yeah, it is. It looks good in the current session and disappears the moment the box restarts. The strangest thing about reading these transcripts back is the risk assessment…
I stopped choosing between SMB, NFS, and iSCSI, and my NAS finally makes sense
…Sign in to your XDA account Network shares are an essential part of any NAS server, as they’re responsible for providing centralized storage to your home lab paraphernalia. But when you…
Remote 3D printing stopped feeling reckless when I added Home Assistant to the mix
…Sign in to your XDA account Remote 3D printing always sounded better in theory than it felt in practice. The promise is great: send a file from anywhere, check in from your…
My Fire TV Stick is infinitely better ever since I enabled this hidden setting
…Sign in to your XDA account By default, Amazon locks your device down to its curated ecosystem. This means you miss out on powerful media players, custom launchers, and niche streaming tools…
Windows 11 has these 4 features nobody talks about, and I can't imagine using it without them
…Sign in to your XDA account If you read a lot about the native features and third-party apps on Windows 11 , you'll start to realize that the PC user experience…
I turned an old Android phone into a home server, and it’s more useful than my Raspberry Pi
…Port forwarding exposes your device directly to the internet, which carries security risks. Tunneling services route traffic securely without opening firewall ports. 04 / 8 Software Which lightweight web server is commonly installed…
Your motherboard's Ethernet port matters a lot more than it did 5 years ago
…Most people who do this intend to host multiple virtual machines, self-host tons of services, run Home Assistant, learn networking and security tools, and build wacky and risky DIY projects. These…
Four 3D prints I use every time I open my PC case
…Sign in to your XDA account A PC build is seldom a one-and-done proposition. Technically inclined tinkerers tend to pop the side panel off frequently to add storage, PCIe accessories…