I’ve Probably Wasted Hundreds of Dollars on My Home Lab — Learn From My Mistakes

If you’re running a home lab, especially something like an Unraid server, let me save you some money — because I’ve probably burned hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars learning lessons the hard way.

This post isn’t about enterprise best practices or perfect setups. This is about years of mistakes, bad assumptions, and overreacting when something went wrong. If you’re building or running a home lab, hopefully this helps you avoid doing the same.

My Setup (and My Bad Habits)

I’ve been running an Unraid server at home for years. It hosts:

Multiple Docker containers
Several VMs
Home automation
Random development projects
Side projects that come and go

Like many homelab users, I built it up over time — adding drives when I needed space, tweaking things when they broke, and generally treating it like a mini data center… even though it’s absolutely not one.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with:

SSDs suddenly going read-only
Hard drives randomly “disappearing”
Drives getting disabled by Unraid
Occasional data loss (the painful kind)

And my default reaction for a long time?

“Welp, drive failed. Time to buy a new one.”

That mindset cost me a lot of money.

The Drive Replacement Trap

Most of my array is made up of 6–10 TB drives, with 10 TB being the sweet spot for years. Back when you could find 10 TB drives for $60–$70 (especially secondhand), replacing one didn’t feel like a big deal.

But here’s the mistake:

👉 Not every “failed” drive is actually failed.

Unraid is conservative by design. If it detects write errors, timeouts, or weird behavior, it may:

Disable the drive
Mark it as read-only
Drop it from the array

That doesn’t automatically mean the drive is dead.

What I should have been doing (and now do):

Put Unraid into Maintenance Mode
Run a SMART check
Run an XFS repair (if applicable)
If no real errors appear:
- Remove the drive
- Re-seat or reconnect it
- Add it back and let Unraid rebuild

Many times, the drive is perfectly fine.

Instead, I was panic-buying replacements.

Drives Fail — That Doesn’t Mean You Failed

Here’s something I’ve finally accepted:

Multiple containers running
VMs writing constantly
Cache activity
Background parity checks

Stuff breaks sometimes.
A transient write failure doesn’t mean your entire system is doomed.

If the drive passes SMART and filesystem checks, put it back. Worst case, it fails again — and then you replace it.

Save the $100–$200 when you can.

Parity: One vs Two (Learned the Hard Way)

I also learned this lesson the painful way:

👉 One parity drive is fine… until it isn’t.

I’ve lost data because:

One drive failed
I tried rebuilding
Another drive hiccupped during parity
Game over

If you can afford it:

Two parity drives are worth it
Especially if you’re using secondhand disks

Yes, it costs more up front.
But it’s cheaper than replacing drives and losing data.

Rule of thumb:

Your parity drive(s) must be at least as large as your largest data drive
If most of your array is 10 TB → parity should be 10 TB

You Probably Don’t Need As Much Storage As You Think

This one hurt my pride a little.

I have 40–50 TB of storage.

Do I actually need that much?

No. Not even close.

Most people:

Aren’t storing massive video libraries
Aren’t running long-term archival projects
Aren’t hosting production services

A lot of my space is filled with:

Old laptop backups
Forgotten projects
“Just in case” data

For most people:

A handful of 10 TB drives is plenty
Even with home projects and media

Storage creep is real — and expensive.

What Actually Matters: Family Data

Here’s the real truth:

The most important data on my server is family photos and videos.

Not:

Side projects
VMs
Docker containers
Experimental apps

Those can be rebuilt.

Photos from Christmas, birthdays, kids growing up?
Those can’t.

This changed how I think about backups.

What I now prioritize backing up:

Family photos & videos
Phone media moved to Unraid
App data (because reconfiguring sucks)

I even keep multiple Unraid servers and manually copy the important stuff between them. It’s not fancy — but it works.

App Data, Plex, and the “Too Many Files” Problem

Backing up app data is great — but some apps (like Plex) generate tons of small files:

Thumbnails
Metadata
Optimized images
Indexes

For large photo libraries (tens of thousands of files), this can explode in size and I/O.

Takeaway:

Back up app data
But be mindful of how much junk some apps generate
Sometimes restoring from scratch is cleaner

Cache Drives, VMs, and a Gotcha I Learned Late

Unraid does something smart — but it can surprise you:

👉 If a VM is larger than your cache, it will live on the array.

That matters because:

Array = parity overhead + slower writes
Cache = faster, designed for frequent writes

I used to give VMs 500 GB each. Totally unnecessary.

Now my VMs are typically:

100–200 GB
Smaller
Faster
Easier to manage

No noticeable downside.

Final Takeaways (The TL;DR)

If I had to summarize years of trial-and-error:

Don’t panic when a drive disappears
Run SMART and filesystem checks first
Re-add drives before replacing them
Two parity drives > one (if you can afford it)
Most people don’t need massive storage
Back up what actually matters (family data)
Smaller VMs are usually better
Home labs are not production environments — and that’s okay

Hard drives are more expensive now than they used to be. That makes learning these lessons before replacing hardware even more important.

If this post saves even one person from impulse-buying a drive they didn’t need — then my wasted money wasn’t totally wasted after all.