I’ve found that for single person purposes, a RAID array is unnecessary. I just buy beefy 8TB drives. If it dies, just download any recent torrents again or pull a backup

So, you can work around these things but you’re going to run into problems if you do:

-If you reset the router, you need to restore the original password else they’ll know

-if they notice you using these devices when you wouldn’t have access, they’ll remove them further from your reach. Possibly permanently.

-If detected, a larger conflict is likely to be escalated. This includes a loss of the benefit of the doubt in the future.

I’d suggest that this is not the battle to fight. They’re likely fighting your apparent obsession with tech. Let them have this battle and continue your fun later.

Try the Stormlight Archive, wheel of time, or mistborn books. Maybe the redwall books if you’re younger. Fun and focus can still be had without a computer!

I’d act like it never happened. If they recognize that they got weird, then they deserve some dignity. If they don’t, then I don’t want to get into that hot mess.

This is the most bougie hamster I’ve ever seen

They do more than just tie hard drives together with a string. They build custom server hardware, maintain data center infrastructure including cooling and networking, pay their employees (the biggest cost), and all the overhead of running a business.

20% increase in one go is rather normal. Business tend to do one big price increase instead of constant small ones because our brains don’t see them billing efficiently relative to their costs, they see only a bunch of tiny price increases.