Electronics Wizardy

I've had it in my home and for work, generally very reliable, almost always reaches full speeds. No real issues here other than wanting a basic ONT option.

What full specs are you using? What parts? Unless the Acer is a great deal I typically like going DIY. Do you want a prebuilt? Other than Gaming, a Mac Studio would be very tempting to me, generally those do very well in the Adobe suite, at much less power draw + size. Take a look here, https://www.pugetsystems.com/pugetbench/results/compare/Puget Bench for Photoshop/11/CPU/Apple M4 Max (16 Cores)/Intel Core Ultra 9 285K/, the M4 Max is a good amount faster than either of those other CPUs in Photoshop.

What exact errors were you seing? Which one? Brand new and a few years old are very different to me. Did you do a fresh install on this system? What version? It seems like you had a bad drive. Check the ram and CPU on the 3770 system and its probably fine. I've seen those idle sub 20w, so there not that bad power wise.

Well legally is likely all up to the contract between the school and Google that you have control over likely. Probably to prevent abuse, and if you need more storage, you can always pay for their cloud storage(genearlly google workplace storage isn't for things like big data sets or video archving) Again, buy HDDs, and its likely the cheapest way to store data if you don't mind doing the maintense yourself.

THats why its important to not use one storage solution. You can get banned from online services, and need to have extra copies so your data is still safe. And since you seem to be not follinwg all laws(copyright) make sure to encrypt all your data first, and fine hosts that don't care. IT can see usage and files you have stored. SO yea they can ban you for improper use. IDK their exact policies so try at your own risk.

How much storage do you need? Buying your own storage, or using cloud storage that is pay per TB with encrypt it to keep the host from looking at it. Data storage isn't cheap, so if you want the vids to be safe, you have to spend money.

Generally its always best to use supported equipment so security features can be fixed. There may be bugs that would make wifi less secure to allow attackers to stay in the AP if they got into the network. For home use its probably fine though.

If you have the hardware, why not try it? Likey enough for a small server, but really depends on the exact workload, and its pretty easy to test if you have it now.

What do you use your laptop for? Do you think you can use that laptop for 2 more years if you went with that path? I'd be tempted to go new laptop now with those issues, and you can probably get a good amount of life from it if a 2017 laptop is good enough for your needs now.

The annoying part is every manafacture has the smart data mean different things, so you don't really know what those mean typically. If the drive isn't having data errors in the OS, I'd keep using it and just make sure backups are good.

Can you show a screen shot of those errors? I'd want to have backups if you carea bout the drive, no matter what the smart data says.

Try it and see how it goes. I've put a lot of active PFC switch mode PSU's on modified sine wave inverters without issues over the years. Not reccomended, but typically works fine.

I'd be reculant to built a nas for someone else's photo storage. Your now on the hook if something goes wrong and data is lost. I'd probably point her to a cloud solution so its not your problem if something goes wrong. That should work, but USB and thunderbolt connections are typically less reilabe, and a little desktop might be better here if you can get one easily. You can get 12v/5v power supplies and get that

Veeam? Full image backups, generally pretty reliable, lots of optios if needed, free

Can you show the specific error? What permissions do you have to that stream folder? What filesystem?