Installing Linux, IDE or SATA?

Question

THE QUESTION:

Is there an advantage to installing Linux on a SATA or IDE drive? I'm hoping to stream media from this server so would it be best to keep the faster SATA disks for that data?

FURTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

I'm setting up a new Home Server based on Debian Linux, and Greyhole storage pooling, to replace my aging Windows Home Server (Also a Homebrew).

I'm recycling hardware, and was wondering how to split the data across the different disks. Eventually, once backups and bits have been copied across from the old server, I'll be using a number of SATA drives and a couple of IDE drives of varying sizes.

Answer 1

In your case, the primary difference between SATA & IDE would be disk performance. If the main task is to stream media, then putting linux on a slower drive should be ok. It might take longer for programs to load initially. Just give enough RAM to avoid swapping to HD.

Answer 2

Not really answering your question, but on a related note...

If you use Greyhole, you'll want to keep it's Landing Zones (the paths in smb.conf) on SATA drives, at least for the initial copying.

When you copy files into a Greyhole share, the files first 'land' there, before the Greyhole daemon moves them into the pooled drives later on. That means the landing zone (directories) will be used a lot during the initial copy, and so, you'll want to use your fastest drive for that.

Note that nothing prevents you from using a drive for both the landing zones and still include it in the Greyhole storage pool.
I do it myself: my landing zones are in /mnt/hdd0/shares/* and /mnt/hdd0/gh is a storage_pool_directory.

Good luck.