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?

  • Suzune@ani.social
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    3 months ago

    Some hard drives are built for 24/7 operation. They have higher MTBF ratings and longer guarantees.

    Hard drives are very different. Many of them waste energy, lie in the SMART log or just are weird (spin up and down, lose speed, get incredibly hot etc.)

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzB
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    3 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

    4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

    [Thread #926 for this sub, first seen 19th Aug 2024, 20:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • 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.

    • 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.