Question Main OS hard drive for Raid 5 server

[krassyg72]

Upgrading my Raid 5 server with new mobo and cpu. What type of hard drive should I pick for the OS? The raid arrays are regular WD 14TB ones; want to get an NVME for the main but not sure about it since they have a limited read/write cycle from what I know. The server headless and only used for video/audio streaming to my other PCs.

 

[Tech Junky]

I'm running all SSD / NVME at this point. For a data only server you only need a small drive for the OS. 32GB would run my Linux OS just fine. You can even run it from a USB drive if you wanted to.

It's up to you.

 

[krassyg72]

Is it safe to run an NVMe for the main OS drive? Just worried about killing it quickly with the large volume of date from the main array. Not really sure about how it works and if the data from the main array will go through it at all.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Not really sure about how it works and if the data from the main array will go through it at all.

Give it enough RAM and it shouldn't need to do any SSD based caching. I think 16GB should be fine. What OS will you be using?

 

[Tech Junky]

I've run mine 24/7 for a couple of years at a time per drive and they only use 2-3%/yr. The OS just sets up the drive mappings and the rest just goes directly to the spinners. Mind you I'm running 1tb drives for the OS for higher tbw/dwpd and longer warranty period as well as the higher capacity drives run faster.

Until switching to DDR 5 I was only running 16gb 2*8 for redundancy. You could get by with far less though as it barely registers on the utilization scale.

 

[krassyg72]

Win 11

 

[igor_kavinski]

Win 11

This should serve as an OS drive nicely: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-250G-2280-Internal-SNV2S/dp/B0BBWH7DBT/