Selecting Drives for HexOS
When selecting storage devices for HexOS, consider type, size, and speed to ensure maximum performance and space efficiency.
Important: Avoid SMR Drives
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.
Drive Types
HDDs (Hard Disk Drives)
- Best for: General purpose file storage and bulk data (pictures, videos, audio)
- Pros: More cost effective per TB
- Cons: Require more power
SSDs (Solid State Drives)
- Best for: High-performance needs (video editing, virtual machines, media servers)
- Pros: Require less power, faster performance
- Cons: More expensive per TB
Drive Sizing
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.
Drive Speed
Storage pool performance is limited by the slowest devices in the pool. Speed factors include:
- HDD RPMs: 5400, 7200, 10,000 RPM, etc.
- Interface: SATA, SAS, NVMe
- SSD Type: SATA SSDs (500-600MB/s) vs NVMe SSDs (1,000MB/s+)
SSD Mixing
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.
Are SSDs Required?
SSDs are highly beneficial but not required:
- With SSDs: Applications and VMs perform optimally
- Without SSDs: Apps on HDD-based pools may perform slower (e.g., slower loading of poster art and metadata in media servers)
Future Migration
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.
Need More Help?
If you have more questions regarding storage and drives, please consider posting in our forums!