It really depends on what you’re trying to do. At the end of the day, the foundational components are pretty standard across the board. All machines have a CPU, motherboard, storage mechanism, etc. Oftentimes those actual servers have a form factor better suited for rack mounting. They often have more powerful components.

But at the end of the day, the difference isn’t as striking as most people not aware of this stuff think.

I’d say considering this is your first experience, you should start with converting an old PC due to the lower price point, and then expand as needed. You’ll learn a lot and get a lot of experience from starting there.

It’s not really any different than hosting any other service.

What are you trying to backup to? I’m assuming some 3rd party service? You might have to break it up by year or something and do it in batches.

My guess is this is the service that has the backlink feature in the top left near the time. So when you open an app, you can easily go back to the previous app.

But, it seems like a bug in iOS that this shows up in your screen time.

I skipped the iOS 17 beta so far. First time in ages that I did. With all the new safety features lately, I prefer my main device to be stable over having the latest and greatest. Which is a huge change for me.