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I recently decided to create my own offline content library on my computer. Who else is doing this and do you have any tips? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I collected about 10 gigabytes of what I like, but I got tired of it so to speak, there were no download buttons, so I had to steal the old-fashioned way without tricks.

In fact, I've been trying to put together a compact portable library that I can carry around on flash drives, because I have a really bad feeling about the near future.

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[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Flash drives are a cool idea for having a copy of your most important stuff on you, but don't make them your only copy. I'd also encrypt them if there's sensitive data you'll be carrying around in public.

A NAS with automatic backups really helps keep the library in one place if you're juggling more than a couple of devices. Could make it out of a VM on your main PC, a repurposed old PC, or a dedicated machine. Spinning rust is usually fine for a digital library, maybe a SSD cache if you need extra performance. Don't forget to periodically make a proper cold, offline, and perhaps offsite backup so you don't lose your hard work.

Jellyfin, Syncthing, and Samba are what I've used to access my library and keep things in sync. I've been ripping discs before the rot sets in and downloading Youtube videos before they make it any harder to.

Also, grab a copy of Wikipedia for Kiwix (you can download specific parts with/without media to suit your needs and storage capacity).

As for the flash drive, I like to keep one on my keychain with Live ISOs, diagnostic utilities, and a small copy of Wikipedia in the unencrypted partition and a collection of photos, music, and documents in the encrypted partition.