I’ve been running a btrfs storage array with data on raid5 and metadata I believe raid1 for the last 5 or so years and have yet to have a problem because of it. I did unfortunately learn not to fully trust the windows btrfs driver but was fortunately able to restore from backups and redownloading.

I wouldn’t hesitate to set it up again for myself or anybody else, and adding a UPS would be icing on the cake. (I added UPS to my setup this last summer)

I’ve been testing Ente out the last few weeks and so far it’s pretty good. Easy enough to setup and point the app to my instance. A little annoying to keep seeing a free tier limit being listed on a self hosted instance. Hopefully it doesn’t actually do anything, we’ll see when I hit it though

Refurbished drive. I’ve had 4 white label drives running for a number of years without issue, planning on eventually getting 12 more and maxing out my servers.
Unfortunately that’s years down the line :(

Throwing in my own data, I have a small server rack at home that runs a brocade icx4630 switch and dell r720, idles around 250w. My desktop setup, monitors, amp, computer itself etc idles around 200w.

Make your stranded end nice and long and easy to “comb” and flatten out. Get all your pairs lined up and in order and flatten the wires together on a table or other work surface.

I usually cut about 3 or so inches of sleeve off the cable to expose the strands. But same thing applies if you can only cut an inch off, just a little more difficult.

Assuming you have passthrough rj45 ends or whatever they’re called, you can just slip on your end and crimp and let the tool trim the excess wire.

If you don’t you get to go through the process of trimming down and getting the tiny stubs to stay together enough to slide into the connector.

Example from eBay listing