I was running the numbers in my head and realized that if hosting media like music and video files where it’s just written to once and read from a lot, a large 2.5 inch SSD might be a better buy than a HDD (especially if size limited to a 2.5 inch HDD). My reasoning is that a HDD needs replacement after around 50,000 power on hours. But an SSD needs replacement depending on how often the entire drive is overwritten. For a media server that should mean that the HDD will be replaced much more often than an SSD. And that’s without considering vibration related issues of having multiple drives in the same server or if you experience frequent power outages (both of which would make a better case for an ssd.
So what I do is I use an M.2 SSD for the OS, and the largest 2.5 sata SSD I can find which will fit my storage and backup solution. (recently bought 4x 8TB SSDs). For the m.2 drive, try to get the best value size as I’ve never heard anyone complain about having too big of a drive.
For all SSDs (m.2 and data) make sure that it accurately reports SMART data for you can keep tabs on their health metrics.
Yeah, you’d have to figure out how to define a “problem” first. It’s a better IDE to define what metrics might indicate you need to replace soon before a problem actually happens.
I was running the numbers in my head and realized that if hosting media like music and video files where it’s just written to once and read from a lot, a large 2.5 inch SSD might be a better buy than a HDD (especially if size limited to a 2.5 inch HDD). My reasoning is that a HDD needs replacement after around 50,000 power on hours. But an SSD needs replacement depending on how often the entire drive is overwritten. For a media server that should mean that the HDD will be replaced much more often than an SSD. And that’s without considering vibration related issues of having multiple drives in the same server or if you experience frequent power outages (both of which would make a better case for an ssd.
So what I do is I use an M.2 SSD for the OS, and the largest 2.5 sata SSD I can find which will fit my storage and backup solution. (recently bought 4x 8TB SSDs). For the m.2 drive, try to get the best value size as I’ve never heard anyone complain about having too big of a drive.
For all SSDs (m.2 and data) make sure that it accurately reports SMART data for you can keep tabs on their health metrics.
any solution for getting automated SMART reports if errors start popping up? I would prefer not to have to check manually
You could just run it in a cron and have it tee to a file or even send an email report
I need some logic to only send when the is a problem. I might send the data to home assistant and take it from there
Yeah, you’d have to figure out how to define a “problem” first. It’s a better IDE to define what metrics might indicate you need to replace soon before a problem actually happens.