When selecting storage devices for HexOS, consider type, size, and speed to ensure maximum performance and space efficiency.
Stay away from HDDs that use SMR (shingled magnetic recording). These drives use a different method for writing data that is not conducive to good performance in RAID-based storage solutions. HexOS actively detects and alerts users to the presence of these drives.
Devices in a single storage pool are size-limited by the smallest disk in that pool. Mixing devices of different sizes is limited in HexOS to prevent wasting storage capacity.
Best practice: Use drives of the same size within each pool.
Storage pool performance is limited by the slowest devices in the pool. Speed factors include:
For most home self-hosting applications, you can mix NVMe and SATA SSDs in the same pool. The performance difference is often negligible unless you have specific high-performance requirements.
SSDs are highly beneficial but not required:
If you start with HDDs and add SSDs later, there will be a migration process to move applications to faster storage. For now, post in the forums for manual migration steps.
If you have more questions regarding storage and drives, please consider posting in our Discord!