Beginner question: Searching for my first dedicated server setup, and I have no idea what to look for in a hard drive. I see a huge difference between drives of the same capacity, so what makes the difference? I am looking to eventually have a media server that can run “-arr” programs, Jellyfin, Immich, sync music, books, etc.

What are the factors I should be paying attention to other than capacity? Is it a lot of branding and smoke and mirrors, or will I see a significant change in performance/reliability with different drives?

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Rpm is a thing to look at. A 7,200 drive is faster than a 4,200, but slower than a 10,000.

    • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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      3 months ago

      One thing to consider here too is that faster drives are louder, run hotter (and thus need better cooling) and use more power.

      For a LOT of home server workloads (streaming media, etc.) a 5400rpm drive is sufficient and you can have a little bit of power savings and less heat and noise as a bonus.

      I’ve kinda become of the opinion that there’s bulk media storage, which for most people is going to have incredibly modest performance requirements, and then there’s eveything else and should be on a SSD anyways.

      …Just avoid SMR if you’re doing anything more than media storage.

      • slacktoid@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        God avoid SMR… (Unless you know what you’re doing in which case you wouldn’t be here)

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 months ago

      10,000 and 15,000 rpm drives were made obsolete by SSDs and were discontinued several years ago. They are slower than many modern 7,200 rpm drives.

      • Doombot1@lemmy.one
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        3 months ago

        As someone that works at a storage devices company - we do still manufacture 10K HDDs. They are faster than the 7200s of the same spec, by nature. All 2.5” drives for enterprise systems. And will actually continue selling them until ~2030. That said, they’re all but obsolete at this point, and aren’t really being developed on any more.