I’m new to selfhosting and I find myself rarely using the server, only when I need to retrieve a document or something.
I was thinking of implementing something to make it power on, on demand, but I’m not sure if this might be harmful for the HDDs, and I’m not sure how to implment it if so.
What’s your recommendation to do so? I’m running a dell optiplex 3050
Wake-on-LAN is probably what you want, if your specific hardware supports it which it probably does. This is a case of figuring out your exact hardware and a little RTFM-ing about how to enable and use WOL.
As for the drives it, in theory, would add more load/unload cycles to them and thus reduce their lifespan. But, in the real world, that almost certainly doesn’t matter, unless you’re turning the system on and off every 5 minutes: modern drives expect to go in and out of power saving modes and most controllers (especially usb enclosures!) do this pretty aggressively, so a couple more load cycles more-or-less are unlikely to actually cause your drive to fail any quicker than it would anyways.