Beginner question: Searching for my first dedicated server setup, and I have no idea what to look for in a hard drive. I see a huge difference between drives of the same capacity, so what makes the difference? I am looking to eventually have a media server that can run “-arr” programs, Jellyfin, Immich, sync music, books, etc.
What are the factors I should be paying attention to other than capacity? Is it a lot of branding and smoke and mirrors, or will I see a significant change in performance/reliability with different drives?
One thing to consider here too is that faster drives are louder, run hotter (and thus need better cooling) and use more power.
For a LOT of home server workloads (streaming media, etc.) a 5400rpm drive is sufficient and you can have a little bit of power savings and less heat and noise as a bonus.
I’ve kinda become of the opinion that there’s bulk media storage, which for most people is going to have incredibly modest performance requirements, and then there’s eveything else and should be on a SSD anyways.
…Just avoid SMR if you’re doing anything more than media storage.