STORAGE HARDWARE

SSD vs HDD for a home server

Use SSDs where latency matters and hard drives where large capacity matters. Many useful home servers benefit from a mixture rather than choosing one technology for everything.

Put the operating system and databases on SSD

Applications, databases, indexes and container metadata respond well to low latency. Immich recommends local SSD storage for its PostgreSQL database, and Jellyfin recommends local fast storage for its database and transcode cache.

Hard drives remain useful for bulk media

Large film, photo and backup collections can consume many terabytes. HDDs often make capacity expansion more economical when sequential throughput is sufficient.

Storage layout is not backup

Mirroring and parity can improve availability after a drive failure, but independent backups still matter for data you cannot replace.

External USB storage can be reasonable

A mini PC with external drives can make a practical home server if cabling, power and enclosure quality are sensible.

Local AI model files prefer SSD

Large model files load faster from SSD storage. Once loaded, inference speed depends primarily on compute and memory bandwidth rather than the disk.

Use our photo, media or personal cloud calculators to estimate capacity before choosing disks.