Getting a mini PC for self hosting. Between a SSD and an NVMe, how would you split OS and random data (like movies, books, etc)?
Getting a mini PC for self hosting. Between a SSD and an NVMe, how would you split OS and random data (like movies, books, etc)?
Most modern SSDs are NVMe devices, so your question doesn't really make sense.
Do you mean between an HDD and and SSD?
Or maybe a SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD?
Honestly 10-20 Gb for OS. 200-500 Mb for UEFI. Everything else separate. A cheap SATA low capacity SSD is fine for the OS usually. Bulk storage is still cheapest on Hard Disk.
M.2 is great and all if you can afford. But unless your network is over 2.5 gbps or you are simultaneously streaming large video streams to multiple clients. Regular SATA drives will be able to keep up fine.
Thank you for the reply to my first Lemmy post. I guess this works 😁
No worries. And honestly if you haven't already committed to a particular Mini PC or absolutely need the form factor. I'd seriously suggest looking on eBay for some old e-waste.
I personally run an old dell business system with a 4th Gen i7 with 16Gb of ram. Cost about 100 dollars when I got it. I run a Minecraft server, Luanti server, jellyfin for movies and TV streaming, icecast/liquidsoap/libretime to stream my own private automated Internet radio, and NFS/SAMBA for NAS. And I still have RAM, CPU, and bandwidth free on a 1gbps network.
The only thing a newer system will net you is possibly a bit more power efficiency. Which depending on electricity costs where you are might make a new system attractive.
Lol but getting into homelabbing, new or old; it's still a gateway drug. One of my favorite BSD/Linux things. At least for hardwired clients is just having my home directory on the NAS. I have a........few systems, and being able to have my downloads and documents etc all right there. Being able to wipe and reinstall the workstation without worrying about my data if I want to distro hop. It's great. Only downside that pops up rarely is file locking. Other than that my files and app settings follow me to all of them.
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.
NVME for OS /
1-2gb for /boot partition so you dont't get screwed on a kernel update
Mount SSD as /home
Don't make the same mistake I did and get a mini PC with at least two of the same interface (so 2x data or 2x m.2) I have one with only one m.2 and so I have os and data all on a single nvme with no redundancy (I know raid/zfs mirror is no backup but redundancy is still better than none)
I have my Synology NAS for redundancy.
Mine is more an exercise in if I could than if I should. I’m using a 1tb disc for os and cache with a thunderbolt, 4 disk jbod nvme enclosure for storage. If I was in need of more storage I’d probably go with a usb jbod ssd enclosure for power efficiency reasons but as is a bit less than 5tb has been fine for my needs.