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Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

tamas.dev

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Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#11

Post by rektide »

qz2 wrote: post #5

I use a Lenovo M series Tiny for this. I have a fanless celeron unit running devuan.

ServeTheHome has been doing a ProjectMiniMicro on testing out different second hand ~1L sized mini-pcs. The series starts with a fairly unimpressive old Dell unit & some background. Matches a lot of what I've been doing at home.

https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic...

I do like the idea of getting a free battery back-up &built-in crash cart for my server. On the other hand, a lot of these mini-pc's have much more powerful cores & more expandability, typically both an m.2 nvme slot and a 2.5" sata, two so-dimms, and a lot more video & usb out.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#12

Post by alistairSH »

Do most of these Chromebooks have the SSD soldered onto the SoC? Or, are they replaceable?

My use case would be similar to this, but also to serve as a lightweight local backup server (never accessed, unless laptop and iCloud backups fail). One 500gb SSD would be sufficient for my use.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#13

Post by josefresco »

nfriedly wrote: post #9
josefresco wrote: post #4

I have a working Chromebook with a broken screen. Sure would be nice to put it to work! Loved that little machine when it was working, perfect for the kids and to take to client meetings (all day battery). It's now in storage, because paying to fix a screen on a $200-something computer doesn't make sense.

When I end up with old hardware that I don't want to fix or re-purpose, I tend to put it on an ebay auction for $0.99 + shipping (or whatever), and hope that someone else can get some additional life out of it.

Good idea, although I'm not wild about selling a Chromebook I can't access but previously had signed into my Google accounts to some stranger.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#14

Post by tyingq »

alistairSH wrote: post #12

Do most of these Chromebooks have the SSD soldered onto the SoC? Or, are they replaceable? My use case would be similar to this, but also to serve as a lightweight local backup server (never accessed, unless laptop and iCloud backups fail). One 500gb SSD would be sufficient for my use.

Yes, you're right, most of them do. Most of the Chromebox's don't though. They typically allow memory and disk upgrades, and they are quite cheap on the used market. The ASUS CN60 is popular. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-Chromebox-CN60-Intel-Celeron-2... ($30, buy it now)

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#15

Post by roland35 »

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card.

It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#16

Post by nfriedly »

josefresco wrote: post #13
nfriedly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I end up with old hardware that I don't want to fix or re-purpose, I tend to put it on an ebay auction for $0.99 + shipping (or whatever), and hope that someone else can get some additional life out of it.

Good idea, although I'm not wild about selling a Chromebook I can't access but previously had signed into my Google accounts to some stranger.

Yeah, I suppose that's a reasonable concern in this case.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#17

Post by m-p-3 »

roland35 wrote: post #15

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster.

I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.

Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server

#20

Post by daniellarusso »

roland35 wrote: post #15

My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!

Yeah, I have a Pi 4 as a home server.

I had it connected to a UPS that went bad, and that trashed the bootloader/firmware on the Pi.

I had to reflash, and it works, but I have also had two 2.5” usb3 drives die in the last month (I had a independently powered usb3 hub attached).

If you care about your files and time, have a working backup strategy in place.

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