cardbord_box

Do you mean the ones that are sold as drive duplicators? Those were the most affordable per HD of what I found. I don't really want to have a button that would erase or write over my drive though. That's asking for trouble. A couple of reviews I read mentioned that the particular devices were really aggressive about power management, and would turn themselves off after 10s or 30s idle. Which sounds very annoying but makes sense if the main thing is to clone drive-to-drive. Not sure if they're all like that.

never do anything port-powered when connecting drives over usb

Anything? Some of my "portable" type HDDs don't have external power input. So there must be some situations in which it is feasible?

I got one of those to try it out and they are kind of unwieldy design. Short, stiff cables. Everything needs to sit just so and if you touch it, can easily become disconnected. Especially if you get the kind with a second USB for power. You need to get a ?charger? (therefor a dedicated electrical outlet) for each drive.

I'm not sure, but I think even though the USB hub is powered, the bigger ones need extra juice. I don't believe they can be solely powered through the data USB connection. Could be wrong.

Computer is too small to have anything put inside it. Has to be external. And it's a mac so it is very hostile to fiddling around.

Great writeup! You are correct that the skeleton is there in a "unix philosophy" manner. Depending on preferences and use cases, it could be perfectly functional.

When I was first getting my media server going I experimented with a more minimal solution like this. Eventually I went with jellyfin and kodi as a client on some devices. I like all the structure. Jellyfin is a bit of a drag to use due to bloat. Kodi is lighter on the client end.

I shared my files via SMB on the local network. First used VLC player to watch on mobile. It's robust. There is also an android MPV player available if you wish. If you have a lot of media it gets tiresome to navigate throug with either of those. Nova Video Player does some of stuff you'd normally offload to a server like remembering what you've already watched. So that was good, but then instead of having the bloat on the server, you have bloat on the phone, which is less convenient. I disagree that consuming media solely via a PC is civilized. It's tolerable in certain situations.

If you have other people to share with who aren't inclined this way, it's kind of a jerk move to force them to accommodate this aesthetic preference. Even if not wanting to run jellyfin there are sleeker media serving solutions available for a middle ground. If it's just for yourself and other kindred spirits, then no reason not to indulge in the minimalism to whatever degree you find satisfying.