Importance of separate data drive

[theNOTO]

I have all the pieces for my new 2TB NAS. I bought 2 - 1TB WD Green Drives. Should I purchase a separate 2.5" drive for my OS? I see a lot of people segregating their OS drive from their data drives and was curious of the benefits.

 

[krazypoloc]

It is never a good idea to have your OS running on the same drive that is hosting files. This can result in bogging down the entire machine under heavy usage and also limit the maximum throughput capabilities.

 

[Jay_S]

I agree with the above - but there's no need to pay a premium for 2.5" drive unless you don't physically have space for a 3.5" OS drive.

 

[theNOTO]

I was thinking 2.5" due to less power consumption.

I will pick up an additional disk for the OS. Thanks guys!

 

[krazypoloc]

I was thinking 2.5" due to less power consumption.

I will pick up an additional disk for the OS. Thanks guys!

If thats the case and you want to also have maximum performance then I would shoot for a small SSD. 36GB should be plenty from most operating systems. However this is of course contingent upon your budget, as a lightning fast drive can be had for as little as $120.

 

[wathman]

I just did this with my newest NAS build. 2.5" drives make a good low power choice if you can't budget a high quality SSD in your build right now. Just be sure you are buying the latest generation of 2.5" drives, a lot of poorer performing drives tend to linger on the market at or near full price since most people think only capacity is important for 2.5" drives. I picked up a Caviar Blue 250GB for $55. It performs acceptably fast, and consumes a fraction of the power that a full sized 3.5" drive does. This also leaves my 2x 1TB Samsung F2 EcoGreen drives in RAID 0 to host files exclusively.

 

[Jay_S]

This is a NAS right? What's the point of a SSD for the OS? Especially since most OS's write a ton of logs. I highly doubt you'll notice an appreciable performance improvement with a SSD in your NAS.

 

[Brandon]

If nothing else, you always want to partition your OS off from your Data drive. This is server 101, if you need to reinstall the OS, or even install a differnt OS, your data isn't touched (So long as you don't accidently format the partition it's on).

I even format my gaming desktop in this method, as I often decide to reinstall Windows.

 

[wathman]

yeah, that is a good point, though makes me really glad I didn't drop an extra $100 for an SSD now. I guess there might be a performance gain to be had with SSD if you were running some flavor of Windows as the OS for the NAS, virtual memory with better read/write speeds might help caching. But most people going for all out performance wouldn't be choosing Windows bloat for the NAS in the first place.

 

[Jay_S]

glad I didn't drop an extra $100 for an SSD now.

That's $100 you can put toward another 1-1.5 TB of storage!

 

[00Roush]

I have all the pieces for my new 2TB NAS. I bought 2 - 1TB WD Green Drives. Should I purchase a separate 2.5" drive for my OS? I see a lot of people segregating their OS drive from their data drives and was curious of the benefits.

Everyone looks to have summed it up pretty well but I figured I would post anyway...

I would recommend separating the OS from the data drives for a few reasons. First would be to keep the data drives independent of any particular system. This makes things easier if the OS drive crashes. Next would be to ensure that the OS has its own separate disk to use for virtual memory and for any other needs it might have. You could also say this would allow the data drives to share files without any interference from OS I/O which can bring file transfer speeds to a crawl. Last would be you can reuse some old hard drive that you don't have a use for anymore. Not sure if that was a good one but I couldn't think of another reason at the moment.

As for using a SSD... I don't really see the point. In general the system drive in a file server won't see much action. So a fast SSD in this situation will not improve performance. I personally recommend finding a cheap drive. A 2.5" drive would be a great idea in my opinion as it would serve its purpose and use less energy while doing it.

00Roush