I have 6 hard drives that have been running constantly from between 5 for the oldest and 2 years for the newest. Zero failures so far. They obviously have a lifespan to them, as with everything, but it’s not like they’ll fail left and right.

And I’ve moved out of so many cloud services (and streaming services) to in house, that over time, the privacy and savings of it are sort of worth it.

The downloading computer can be lower powered, and can do a bunch of different things! Home automation, ad blocking, file storage, so many options!