I have an HP pavillion 15-bc235nd that, quite frankly, I don´t really like that much (way too loud of a fan, cannot adjust the fan curve, keyboard and trackpad are terrible, etc).

I was planning to replace with laptop with something else, but in the meantime, I was thinking of something. Instead of getting this laptop in the landfill or give to someone else (no one needs an emergency laptop right now), I could potentially use this has a server machine to be used as an off site backup location.

Right now I am missing the off site backup part out of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. Since this laptop has more than enough horsepower to do the job, it could be a solution. But personally, I am not sure how reliable a laptop turned into a server can be. This laptop would be around 3000km away from me, so I have to be really sure it works at a distance without much problem.

For those who turned a laptop into a server: what is your mileage? Are there any specific considerations about this setup that a regular desktop/server does not have or specific issues?

  • @[email protected]English
    1•2 days ago

    battery of this machine is toast (holds up for half an hour or less)

    Fair.

    as someone mentioned in another comment: unattended laptops with batteries can be actually bad. Batteries on certain cases can leak and cause fires, so for me, if it can work without it great, otherwise I have to drop the idea

    I’m not clear on how a UPS would be different in this regard. They both have high-capacity batteries that need monitoring. Unless the UPS is using a different chemistry?

    • @[email protected]English
      1•2 days ago

      Laptops use lithium-ion batteries and (at least your Average Joe’s and majority of commercial units too) UPS uses sealed Lead Acid. If lithium ion battery goes belly up it’ll burn your house down. If lead acid battery does the same, at worst, it’ll leak a bit of corrodive fluids to whatever it’s on top of.

      There’s commercial size li-ion UPS’s too, but they require quite a lot of hardware around them to be used safely. Search from youtube (or whatever you like) a cell phone battery explosion and then scale that up to a fridge-sized cell-phone. It’s quite a bit of steel and concrete to contain that amount of energy. And the funny thing about li-ion fires is that lithium ions reacts quite violently with water and the battery contains all the chemicals to keep the fire going, oxygen included.

      So, yeah, UPS is a whole another thing to manage than a laptop battery.

    • @ZeDoTelhadoOPEnglish
      1•2 days ago

      From my experience in the past, ups are done to be constantly on, and as far as I know, usually they have failsafe mechanism in case something is not working as intended. Laptop batteries do not have such extensive protection from what I know. However, if an ups is getting old (around 5 years or so) is probably best to change the batteries (if the model allows it)