HDD or SSD for Business Solutions

[MacSauce]

What type of drive is typically suggested for companies that don't store/edit videos. The heaviest lifting our company does is light CAD work. Most of our storage space is taken up by photos and cad drawings, copious MS Word reports and other windows office suite program files.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Is this for a workstation or a server?

 

IS it a boot drive? If so get a ssd.

 

How much capacity do you need, if you need less than like 1tb, might as well get a ssd.

 

Id argue that you probably shouldn't be storing lots of data on workstations, so go ssd only, and store most things on the cloud or a server.

[MacSauce]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is this for a workstation or a server?

 

IS it a boot drive? If so get a ssd.

 

How much capacity do you need, if you need less than like 1tb, might as well get a ssd.

 

Id argue that you probably shouldn't be storing lots of data on workstations, so go ssd only, and store most things on the cloud or a server.

this is for centralized storage aka a server. Also, right now we only have two separate drives with 2TB a piece which seems measly. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, MacSauce said:

this is for centralized storage aka a server. Also, right now we only have two separate drives with 2TB a piece which seems measly. 

What network speeds do you have?

 

How many users are using this storage?

 

What is the usage on the current 2tb drives? I have worked at some places where than is plenty of performance and space. Word docs are small, so need need for much space or speed.

[MacSauce]

Unsure of network speeds honestly, we employ ~350  people. Big thing is, one drive is located in our office, the other drive is located in our corporate office over 150 miles away so things run slowly if we use their drive. Both drives are sitting at half full at the moment but over time they will get filled up. I think what takes up the most space in our case are the thousands of photos that get stored without file size reduction.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, MacSauce said:

Unsure of network speeds honestly, we employ ~350  people. Big thing is, one drive is located in our office, the other drive is located in our corporate office over 150 miles away so things run slowly if we use their drive. Both drives are sitting at half full at the moment but over time they will get filled up. I think what takes up the most space in our case are the thousands of photos that get stored without file size reduction.

Are you the administrator of that server? Are you able to log in to it or monitor it?

 

Can you use something like windirstat to see what files and folders use the most space?

[MacSauce]

I am not an administrator, and I can't monitor or see what is taking up the most space. I am just looking for what people think works best/is most practical when it comes to server storage solutions.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, MacSauce said:

I am not an administrator, and I can't monitor or see what is taking up the most space. I am just looking for what people think works best/is most practical when it comes to server storage solutions.

Without knowing more details its hard to say anything.

 

Id go ssd everywhere you can these days, the only time to go hdds is for cost. 

 

That wan link to the other location is likely that is the issue, and having ssds won't help.

 

If speed is a Issue, complain to IT, there isn't much else you can do here.

[MacSauce]

Well SSD would be my initial thought as well. However I keep seeing people say that SSDs have shorter lifespans than HDD due to disk writing limits. Just looking to see how true that is. And honestly when it comes to a company, a 10tb SSD is pennies when it comes to the grand picture. Plus higher read and write speeds seem like a no brainer. However I am unsure of the difference since it is a server and has to be transferred via physical cables. My area of knowledge is strictly gaming/home PC, not server.

 

Also, my IT guy just told me our network speed is 1gb (not surprising considering the poop boards that are in our workstations), and according to a speed test our internet speed is 80/20 (down/up)

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, MacSauce said:

However I keep seeing people say that SSDs have shorter lifespans than HDD due to disk writing limits. Just looking to see how true that is.

SSD are generally more reliable. You can have ssds die early if you need lots of write endurance and you pick a drive without much endurance, but isn't a issue if you pick the right drives.

 

 

5 minutes ago, MacSauce said:

Also, my IT guy just told me our network speed is 1gb (not surprising considering the poop boards that are in our workstations), and according to a speed test our internet speed is 80/20 (down/up)

THe speed test is measuring your speed to the internet. The lan network is 1gbit, so both of those are right. 

 

THe slowness here is likely due to it accessing a remote server, and the extra latency and low bandwidth, hdds should be plenty for this use(but idk their load)