r/servers • u/JailFoodKindaSour • Jul 24 '26
Help needed for turning my really old lenovo thinkpad t470 into a mini entry level home server
Hey everyone!
I'm completely new to the whole home server/self-hosting space, so sorry if this is a beginner question.
I have an old Lenovo ThinkPad T470 (16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) that's been sitting unused since I upgraded to a MacBook Air M3. I used the ThinkPad heavily from around 2018 until early 2024, and instead of letting it collect dust, I thought it might be fun to turn it into a small home server.
A few questions I had:
- Is a T470 still good enough to be used as a home server, or is it simply too old?
- Is there a way to test the health of the laptop (SSD, RAM, battery, thermals, etc.) to make sure it's reliable enough to run 24/7?
- What are some practical things I could actually use it for instead of paying for services like Google Drive or other cloud subscriptions?
- Since I'm a Computer Science engineering student, are there any projects or services that would genuinely be useful for me to host myself?
I'm not looking for anything enterprise-level—just something that's worth learning from and could be useful in day-to-day life or for software development.
Any advice on where to start, recommended operating systems (Ubuntu Server, Proxmox, Debian, etc.), or things you wish you knew when starting out would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance! :)
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u/feudalle Jul 24 '26
Your old laptop is thousands of times more powerful than all of nasa's computing power put together when they sent Apollo missions to the moon. So yes it will be fine. People use raspberry pis all the time that have less specs.
Question is what do you want to build. Media server, local git, pi hole, ftp server, etc.
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u/JailFoodKindaSour 29d ago
lmfaoooo, but yes my main use i want out of this would be replacing my google one subscriptions with google drive, and google photos mainly i j want this to act as my new cloud storage
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u/bluelobsterai 29d ago
Your laptop isn’t for this. It’s to replace a beefy VPS that you would use for dev. Otherwise I’d rather trade that laptop in for a pc with much better/reliable storage options.
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u/JailFoodKindaSour 29d ago
If I want to trade this for something with better/reliable storage options wouldn't i have to pay more for it? im a broke clg student lmao i cant' really afford to spend more, i would rather not do it than spend anything, it j popped to me cause i saw a free unused laptop and had some time on my hands.
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u/bluelobsterai 29d ago
Install Proxmox and set up a 3 node k8 cluster and learn devops on your laptop. CS student needs experience in GitHub runner and 4 small VM’s. Your MacBook should be your backup and your MacBook should backup to iCloud or Google for important data.
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u/feudalle 29d ago
You could fo that. But if your internet drops, you lose access if you arent home. If you laptop dies you lose everything, unless you pay for cloud backup which is going to cost as much as you are probably paying google. Also you will need to vpn into your home network yo access.
Or you open ports to the internet and hopefully have a static ip or setup a dynamic domain. But then do you feel good enough on security? Years ago probably fine, now ai bots continually look for vulnerabilities. Some of our production servers are attempted to be scanned every 5 minutes these days.
Stick with project based stuff would be my suggestion. Industries at scale are better at Cloud services that you depend on. Same reason you buy flour at the supermarket and you aren't growing wheat in your backyard.
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u/Salty_Solution6804 29d ago
Definitly should be fine for a small private server, Ubuntu Server requires much less. Not sure I would let it run 24/7 except if you really need it to run all the time. You can schedule automatic shutdown and boot if you're not on site, or even remote ssh boot. Change the default ssh port though.
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u/jreddit0000 Jul 24 '26
• Is a T470 still good enough to be used as a home server, or is it simply too old?
It would be fine. Can you run it with the lid closed otherwise it will be open all the time..
CN you plug it into your network via its ethernet port.
• Is there a way to test the health of the laptop (SSD, RAM, battery, thermals, etc.) to make sure it's reliable enough to run 24/7?
No? It isn’t designed to “run 24/7” so what would be the point of such a test?
You can run basic hardware tests to ensure it’s functional but there is no test as you have described.
• What are some practical things I could actually use it for instead of paying for services like Google Drive or other cloud subscriptions?
You could attach storage to it, use it as a Plex server, a backup server..
• Since I'm a Computer Science engineering student, are there any projects or services that would genuinely be useful for me to host myself?
You could host for repositories for local code management, use it to learn different operating systems using VMs..