Media server storage question

[jhansman]

Mods: if this post belongs over in M & S, by all means, move it.

I am considering adding more storage to my media server, and am wondering if an SSD drive would be a better choice to stream from. I'd like to add another terabyte, but am willing to scale that back if a larger SSD would be a better choice. Is storage read speed a factor in a wired network environment? Right now my two 7200 RPM spinners are handling the load, and I'm seeing some breakup and clipping, but I have no way to know if this is lag on the drive's part, or the encoding, or what. TIA.

 

[sdifox]

why would you need to stream from ssd? Nothing wrong with read speed of normal hdd.

transfer rate of hdds are in the 50 60 megabyte per sec range, that is 400 - 480 mbps. Your network is much more likely to be the bottleneck.

 

[jhansman]

Ah, so I suspected. Thanks. As prices continue to fall on rotationals, I'll pounce when the deals are too good to pass up.

 

[notposting]

I regret not buying excessive amounts of HD's last summer. Was picking up 2TB drives for $70, missed when they hit $60 a couple times. Now I get the emails from Newegg showing 250GB drives for $70 :'( edit: streaming presents a best case scenario for hard drives, random access all over the drive is where an SSD can shine.

 

[jhansman]

I remember one hot deal posted here before the big flood for a 3TB drive that was just over $100. Should have grabbed it then. Like gas prices of last year, they'll likely never be that low again.