this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Jellyfin: The Free Software Media System

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Greetings, I am in the process of learning self-hosting. Recently built a pc and its running as my Jellyfin client along with a Android TV box I flashed LineageOs onto. I grabbed a Lenovo mini pc, installed proxmox and I now have a few LXCs running, with one being Jellyfin. Was wondering what most people used as a solution for file storage on a budget? Was looking at getting a 2-bay Ugreen NAS, but then I heard the NFS latency can be a bit much- also read that an Intel processor is necessary on these for transcoding and swapping OSes, which ups the cost a bit. I've heard of some people using the Lenovo mini PCs and just attaching external storage. I'm still new at selfhosting and am wondering what would be the best route for me, don't really like tinkering with hardware a ton and was hoping to use an open source NAS like trueNAS and not some proprietary system. Thanks!

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[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 9 points 6 days ago

Use whatever you have currently or free castoffs from family/friends. If it has specific issues, then upgrade to fix those issues.

I am using a 10+ year old desktop computer with new hard drives to host NFS for my Jellyfin. Installed FreeBSD with ZFS. 8 GB RAM (any video I play will be smaller than available RAM), 4 cores. My TVs are NOT 4K. Zero issues.

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I don't do transcoding on my Jellyfin server, so a SBC works great. I have an odroid HC4 and it works great. If you can use the Jellyfin client on your TV box, the server doesn't typically have to transcode anything. Works great for me at least.

[–] v0id@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Oh I haven't heard of this, thanks for the suggestion! Seems to tick all the boxes

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Personally I just have ~6TB of SSD/nvme storage in my desktop. And I just delete content im done watching. If I want to watch it again I just get it from usenet :)

Not very helpful but an option is always to just not use so much space on content that is available

[–] mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Beelink ME mini has an Intel igpu and 6 nvme slots for very cheap. Memory is a bit low though and CPU might not handle much more than Jellyfin

Probably a good option to get you started and then you can just use it as a Nas if you upgrade to a bigger AMD machine for docker/kubernetes.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

What I am planning to do for myself is add a few drives to my proxmox pc, create a truenas vm and pass those drives through to it. Saves a bit of money if you have the space.

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 1 points 5 days ago

If you're on a budget and only planning to watch the media locally, don't worry too much about transcoding. Just acquire media in a format and resolution your player and TV can handle natively.