I'm looking to create a budget server for hosting a Minecraft server for my friends and family, as well as some media storage for photos and videos. I've seen that many people use a Linux-based OS for this purpose, which I've never tried before, but it seems pretty straightforward. I have some extra computer parts lying around since I've built several PCs in the past, so that's not an issue.
In my research about budget server setups, I came across the concept of a cache SSD setup. I have four 500GB HDDs that I could use, but I'm wondering if it's really worth it to set up a home server with a cache drive on Linux, especially since I expect minimal use at first. Would it be better to just run the Minecraft server on an SSD and use the HDDs for storage? I'd appreciate any insights or advice as I consider diving into this project!
1 Answer
Honestly, you probably don’t need a full SSD caching setup for a home server. Just running your OS and the Minecraft server off the SSD while keeping the HDDs for media storage should give you decent performance for what you need right now.
That makes sense! I thought the cache idea sounded cool, but it probably wouldn’t be worth it for my limited usage. By the way, can I pull out some HDDs from my Windows PC with files on them and connect them to the Linux server? Will the files be accessible?