Suggest a OS drive, and explain why. Please?

MrB
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 7:47 am

Suggest a OS drive, and explain why. Please?

Postby MrB » Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:38 am

I went and bought two new chassis... Well, rather, i bought two used chassis.
They are SuperMicro SC813MTQ-350CB, and, so as you might be able to tell, they are somewhat limited for space. I was hoping to do with this system, as with the FreeNAS one i intend to build in the other chassi, and run it of a USB drive, but apparently, that isn't supported. That is, for a reason, i assume, so, not going that route. Instead, i think i'll run a mounting bracket in the PCI "slot" and put a 5'th hard-drive there, and use it as a system-drive, leaving the storage i want to make available to the network free to use the 4 hot-swap bays on the front. Should have me covered, and let me upgrade all 4 drives when-ever i want / need. To start with it will see 4 old and (ab)used 2 tB drives, but i assume this will increase as i go along, over time.
Now, the real question. What size drive should i stick in the 5'th slot. Is it performance critical, meaning i should pick a fast drive, and, so on. Is it possible to "keep it" from being a part of the networked storage? Meaning, can it act as a dedicated system drive?

Bonus question, not at all related to the topic, but something i came up with as i was typing...
What are my options for "on the fly" media transcoding? I don't expect a shortage of CPU power, or memory, so it will pretty much be down to what software is available. I'm hoping to be able to stream based on "profiles" or something, so that my darn LG 42LX650n can be used for a few more years. It's new enough to support all i need, 3D, (active shutter glasses) DLNA, and... well, that is it really. But while my media comes in different flavors, since "most" is viewed on the PC, and i have no problem with it there, the TV can not process some formats, and/or bit rates, and craps it's pants. As a bonus, i could use the same "profiles" to stream media to the surf pad, phone, PS3, and possibly the PSP. (Yes, it works fine. Leave my PSP alone. ;- ) Bottom line is, none of the devices i intend to stream to, supports "apps" in any useful way, so profiles for how the stream should "look" has to be configured on the host, and applied as fit to run on the client based on the client name.

Anyway, i think that is all for now.
Thank you all for your time and effort.
B!

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sgtfoo
Posts: 419
Joined: Sun Jul 18, 2010 8:27 pm

Re: Suggest a OS drive, and explain why. Please?

Postby sgtfoo » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:58 am

For your system drive you can use any small sized HDD or SSD. Supermicro even sells Disk-on-Module SSDs that are super small SATA media.
Regardless of where you put OS, you can select where your data goes and where your OS goes and they would never intermingle.
It doesn't matter for the most part about the speed of the OS drive, because if the server is always on, it's never booting.

If you plan to transcode and steam and write and read a lot from your data drives, maybe they should be faster drives..

Sorry, don't have a good answer for your second question. I think the best answer might be Plex.
SgtFoo
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