Outside my depth but I’ll give it a stab. Identify what data is important, (is the full 42Tb needed?). Can the data be split into easier to handle chunks?

If it is, then I personally do an initial sneakernet to get the fist set of data over. Then mirror different on a regular basis.

Plus the desire to fulfill it.

Only works when no one is looking at you… and when you’re naked.

Can probably make a trilogy out of it… maybe even a franchise.

Does not teleport your cloths.

I’m curious if that works with unfederated servers or servers that simple just get shutdown. Ie xyz government decides to raid the servers, (is there redundancy in the data?)

I agree. I’ve has to scrap and force upgrade multiple devices over the years, solely due to the battery dying quickly. Definitely a built in obsolescence built into the industry that needs to be fixed.

If you truely want to do one from scratch truenas I think is the goto project, (I personally go with pre-built solutions of external HDD or Synology/QNAP NAS).

https://www.truenas.com/