Hello!
I am getting the parts together for a tower server build. I plan on running Jellyfin, maybe dive into arrs and nextcloud for 2 users total, wireguard only for external access as it’s not the main focus for now.
Situation: if I have access to refurb/used 4TB enterprise HDDs at the same price as 1.9ish TB enterprise SSDs.
I’d take lower capacity as it is not that big of a concern for me rn. I want to have somewhat redundant storage of my documents, photos, but otherwise it’s not gonna be a giant media vault overflowing with movies.
Question: In terms of noise, shipping concerns and longevity, would you go with SSDs instead of HDDs? Is it lower maintenance?
I can of course buy spinners later if I find flash only to be restricting in any way, and add to the rig as needed.
Speed would not be an issue in any case. This is for TrueNAS scale, so zfs. I am planning to buy 3-4 disks now, and add more if needed in 6 months time or later.
I am eager to hear others opininons on this. Thanks!
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Failure rates for sdd are better than hdd but generally not by a lot. I’ve read that hdds can have a higher “crib death” where new drives have a higher failure rate, but after like a year they are solid. Unless you’re buying thousands of drives you’re unlikely to notice though.
I’ve never heard of “noise” being an issue for an hdd - especially if you have it in any sort of enclosure. If you’re not sitting right next to it you shouldn’t notice.
The biggest differences are performance and cost. If you want speed go ssd. If you want cheap go hdd.
My desktop systems run ssd where performance really matters to me. I get hdds for my file server where I want bulk storage.
Failure rates for sdd are better than hdd
I’m curious on where did you find this. Maybe they have lower DOA rates and decreased chances to fail in the first year, but SSDs have a limited usage lifetime / limited writes, so even if they don’t fail quickly, they wear out over time and at first they have degraded performance, but finally succumb in 5 years or less, even when lightly used (as in as OS drives).
To avoid DOA / first year issues with HDDs, just have the patience to fully scan them before using with a good disk testing app.
even consumer SSDs have around 1500 TBW (Terrabytes written) per TB until warrenty excludes any failure
which means you could write for example every day for 10 years 400 GB on a 1 TB SSD
this is already a very low estimate, most SSDs do betteranyway OP mentioned enterprise SSDs which can write 1.0x or 2.0x it’s own size every day for 10 years
I personally have used the cheap ssd prices this year to buy a 4 TB ssd for my NAS. Reasons for this decision include physical space, energy consumption and noise.
However, the backup for my NAS is on a HDD.
