A personal look at my two-year journey building a home server with Unraid, Plex, and Homebridge. Here’s what I used, why, and what I’ve learned along the way.

It’s funny how some projects start. You think it’ll be a weekend thing. A quick fix. Then you blink, and it’s two years later, and that “quick fix” has become the quiet, humming heart of your home. That’s the story of my home server.

It didn’t begin with a grand plan. It started with a frustration I think a lot of us know: digital mess. I had movies and TV shows scattered across a handful of external hard drives. My smart home was a patchwork of different apps that refused to talk to each other. Nothing was centralized. Nothing was simple.

So, I decided to build a central place for everything to live. A digital command center. Two years later, it’s one of the most useful things I own.

The Brains of the Operation: Unraid

The whole setup is built on something called Unraid. If you’re not familiar with it, the simplest way to think about it is as a flexible operating system for a server. Its best feature is how it handles hard drives.

You can mix and match drives of different sizes, which is great when you’re building a system over time. You buy a new drive, you slot it in, and you add it to the pool of storage. It’s perfect for a project that grows as your needs (and your media library) do.

Unraid is the foundation. It runs 24/7, quietly managing the hardware so the fun stuff can work.

What’s It Actually Doing?

So what does this server do all day? It mostly handles two main jobs: being my personal media library and running my smart home.

• Plex: My Own Personal Netflix
  This is probably the most-used part of the whole system. Plex is software that takes all those movie and TV show files, organizes them into a beautiful, easy-to-use library, and lets me stream them to any device, anywhere. It automatically downloads movie posters, cast information, and descriptions. It feels just like Netflix or Disney+, but it’s all my own media. No more hunting for the right external hard drive. I just open the Plex app on my TV, phone, or laptop, and everything is right there.

• Homebridge: Getting My Smart Home to Cooperate
  Have you ever bought a smart plug or light bulb, only to realize it doesn’t work with Apple HomeKit? That’s where Homebridge comes in. It’s a clever little piece of software that acts as a bridge. It takes devices that aren’t natively supported by HomeKit and makes them show up in the Apple Home app. Suddenly, that oddball smart plug or old garage door opener can be controlled with Siri or included in my automated routines. It’s the glue that holds my smart home together.

Backups, Because Peace of Mind is a Feature

The most important job of any server is keeping your data safe. A server without a backup plan is just a disaster waiting to happen.

My approach is pretty straightforward. The main Unraid server holds all the primary data—the media, the software, everything. But I also have separate Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives that serve one purpose: backups.

Periodically, the main server copies everything over to these backup drives. It’s the old 3-2-1 rule in action: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy off-site (or at least on a separate device). If the main server ever fails, I won’t lose two years of work and collecting.

A Two-Year Journey

This setup didn’t happen overnight. It was a slow burn. It started with one hard drive and a Plex server. Then I added Homebridge to solve a smart home annoyance. As my media library grew, I added more drives. I learned about networking, data integrity, and the quiet satisfaction of building something yourself.

It’s a hobby. There’s always something to tweak, a new app to try, or a better way to organize things. It’s never really “done,” and that’s part of the fun.

If you’re thinking about starting something similar, my only advice is to start small. Solve one problem first. Maybe it’s organizing your photos. Maybe it’s setting up a simple media server. You can build from there. It might just become your favorite project.