← Back to journal

Homelab Journal

Homelab Journal #10: The storage tidy-up I kept avoiding

25 Mar 2026

Week ten of the SmallGrid homelab: sorting storage paths, mounts, and folders before they became a future troubleshooting gift.

Cartoon homelab desk with Jellyfin working successfully
#journal#homelab#storage#maintenance

This week’s goal

Make storage boring and predictable.

Storage is one of those things that feels fine until a reboot turns a folder into an empty mount point and you start bargaining with the command line.

What I actually did

I checked:

  • where media lives
  • where config lives
  • which disks mount at boot
  • what paths Jellyfin expects
  • whether backups include the important parts

I also wrote down the mount points instead of relying on my traditional system of “it is somewhere under /mnt, probably”.

What broke, or nearly did

One folder looked correct but was not the mounted disk I thought it was.

That is a very specific kind of homelab betrayal: the path exists, the folder opens, and yet reality has quietly left the building.

What I’m keeping

  • Clear mount points
  • Written storage notes
  • Media paths separate from config paths
  • Fewer mystery folders

SmallGrid takeaway

A tidy storage layout saves future panic. You do not need enterprise storage design; you need to know what is mounted, where it lives, and what happens after a reboot.

← Back to journal