SSD or HDD?

[zoldos]

I have the choice of SSD or HDD for my upcoming hosting change. Do I really need SSD? It cuts my available space in half so I'd like to use HDD instead. Will I notice any difference on a forum with no more than 7 or 8 members on-line at once (and NO bots or guests)?

 

[Mouth]

If you don't need the additional space, then SSD. It will greatly reduce your disk i/o as a bottleneck.

 

[whynot]

Will I notice any difference on a forum with no more than 7 or 8 members on-line at once (and NO bots or guests)?

You won't notice significant difference.

 

[duderuud]

You won't notice significant difference.

Just what @Mouth says, if you don't need the disk space (and not much additional costs), go for SSD. You may not need the extra speed but you can never have enough

 

[Anthony Parsons]

What @Mouth said. SSD is the only viable option nowadays.

 

[fly]

Another vote for SSD. Spinning platters are gross.

 

[zoldos]

Okay thanks everyone! For just a bit more, I can get twice the space and RAM, and keep the SSD. Good stuff.

 

[andy_mk3]

My forum is on an SSD and it very snappy and generally nice to use

 

[Divvens]

We moved from HDD to SSD 2 and a half months back, the performance improvement was visible. Things function a lot more fluid and smoothly, cannot pinpoint anything in particular but we have certain days (2 days a week) where there is heavy traffic (3000+ guests constantly for over 15/16 hours) and a lot of members online (more than other days) who post and interact with content (like, report etc.) a lot. We got our server optimized by @MattW and it functions very well, but the move to a SSD plan made even greater difference for us (well, that and adding 2GB additional RAM...).

But conclusion, SSD really does help

 

[zoldos]

@Divvens Ah, very nice. Thanks!!

 

[Forcycle]

Generally, I'd recommend an SSD as it can't hurt to have one. If budget is an issue, the best way to look at it would be: Do you actually need the extra space?

Sure, having 20 GB space might sound more attractive than just 10 GB, but the average website is only a few hundred MB large. In this case, it makes sense to cut the extra HDD space and opt for an SSD. If this is reversed however, then opt for a HDD.

 

[zoldos]

My site currently takes up about 53GB. But I have plenty left.

 

[Pierce]

Considering 256gb ssd's in dedicated servers don't even change the price compared to say a 2tb physical.

And considering that attachments is where space is required, you need to have double your space free.

Why?

Backups because why.

If your site needs 128gb storage you need at least 256gb to tar.gz it. I know there is cool tricks to move it off the server but for the normal people reading this, it's an important point.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

We got our server optimized

If ever in doubt, try https://haydenjames.io

One of the best in the world for overall server optimization.

 

[zoldos]

Considering 256gb ssd's in dedicated servers don't even change the price compared to say a 2tb physical.

And considering that attachments is where space is required, you need to have double your space free.

Why?

Backups because why.

If your site needs 128gb storage you need at least 256gb to tar.gz it. I know there is cool tricks to move it off the server but for the normal people reading this, it's an important point.

I backup via FTP about once a week and the database every other day....

 

[Pierce]

I have a 12mbps connection and a 1mbps upload so it's not practical for my case.

So I sftp server to server.

But I also use a paid for backup service. If it fails I get phone calls/emails from them.

 

[Mike Edge]

We use 2 RAID10's on our servers. RAID Array one is SSD for OS and MySQL, array two is SATA3 which is dedicated to /home.

 

[Pierce]

And when raid is not and never will be backup

 

[Pierce]

We use 2 RAID10's on our servers. RAID Array one is SSD for OS and MySQL, array two is SATA3 which is dedicated to /home.

Actually how much ram do you have per server?

 

[Mike Edge]

And when raid is not and never will be backup

Agree 10000% we use R1Soft off site for backups.

Actually how much ram do you have per server?

64GB - 128GB depending on the server model. We are slowly but surely phasing out our old hardware to support 128GB RAM in all our servers.