
# A ZFS tale
I recently traded and got in return 1TB HDD from a friend, had another one collecting dust, and an old Core 2 Duo machine doing nothing. Perfect time to build a nas maybe!

## The Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93GHz
- 4GB RAM
- 2x 1TB HDDs (one mine, one traded)

## What I Did
1. Installed Arch Linux (because why make life easy?)
2. Set up ZFS on the traded drive
3. Got Nextcloud running for media storage

Here's my simple `ZFS list` :
```bash
mediapool/photos    # photos
mediapool/videos    # videos
mediapool/documents # Important stuff
```

## iCloud Sync Setup

I (ofc me & LLM) implemented a smart backup strategy between iCloud and my local storage:

```python
# Key features of my sync script:
- Maintains a diffrential index to track what's been downloaded
- Only syncs new/changed files from iCloud
- Preserves directory structure: /mediapool/photos/YEAR/MONTH/
- Handles API rate limits to avoid throttling
- Converts HEIC to JPG during sync (idk who to curse, the browser codecs or apple for coming up with a werid image format)
```

The script runs every month and only downloads what's new, saving both bandwidth and API calls. It's been surprisingly reliable!

## Lessons Learned
- ZFS is amazing
- Old hardware can still be useful

## What's Next
- Adding more drives (looking at you, friends with "obsolete" hardware), it's super easy to add / remove drives into zfs, just need to attach them and add them to the vdev
- read up more about ZFS
- Implementing backup strategies for my backup ;)
- should I write a proper UI for the media management system, hate nextcloud it's super heavy, rn I'm looking at `filebrowser`.

*P.S. If you have any spare drives lying around, no, I don't want them (I totally do).*

## Code & Scripts
All the scripts mentioned (iCloud sync, HEIC conversion) are available on my GitHub. Feel free to adapt them for your own use!


← back

Software Engineering related Posts

2025