Using Flash Drives as Main Disks

[TheRunningOtaku]

Hey guys!

I'm thinking of building some servers (mostly just game servers like Space Engineers, Minecraft and maybe a website and NAS) and was wondering about the using 16gb SanDisk Cruzer flash drives for the main drives, since they're only like $8.

The 4 rigs are old HP workstations with Core2Deo E8400s and no graphics cards, and I don't want to waste that much money on Hard Drives that are susceptible to failure and SSDs that cost a bomb. I managed to obtain the rigs free, and I'm on a tight budget.

 

What do you all think?

[Vacsol]

The speed of those drives would cause a HUGE bottleneck for games like Minecraft

[Nico123473]

And Flash drives are not that reliable either look at this HDD  HERE

[Clyne]

Just what @Vacsol said but it would be better to get those WD Red Hard Drives.

[Raid]

Flash drives wear out fairly quickly. They're also slow, may cause some compatibility issues and are really expensive per gigabyte compared to hard drives.

Would not suggest you do that.

[TheRunningOtaku]

That's an IDE drive though. The computers came with 250gb WD blue drives but I want to take those and use them in my own computer when I build it.

Aren't flash drives better at random Read/Writes than normal hard drives?

I only need 4-8gb per computer.

[hojnikb]

Aren't flash drives better at random Read/Writes than normal hard drives?

No, they are actually way way worse (sometimes even as bad as 0.01MB/s). So yeah, its really not reccomended, that you run OS from flash drives, since its gonna be slow and trouble will appear. Flash drives are not meant for running OS, since their controllers are very very simple (think 70s computers simple) and their garbage collection and wear levelling is not tuned for such workload.

[TheRunningOtaku]

The OS will be TinyCoreLinux, so not much IO will be needed for that, though not sure about Minecraft, Space Engineers and a NAS. I've seen NAS systems running off a USB before so I don't think it's that intensive, right?

 

I just did some tests and the SanDisk Cruzer has 4.3 Read and 1.4 Write at 4k Random, tested with Crystal Disk Mark 3.03. The 5400 rpm 2.5inch drive on my laptop has 0.34 and 0.85 for the same test, and the 3.5 inch hitachi 7200 rpm SATA/600 Drive on a desktop has 0.69 and 1.37 for the same tests, so I think the Cruzer will be faster

Though I'm not sure about the reliability of the flash drive or the performance consistency. All drives were about half full at the time of testing. 

At $8 for 16gb, it's $0.5/GB, and SSDs like the MX100 are still about $60 for 120GB so the price/GB isn't that high.

Ideally I'd get a small SSD, but I don't know where to get very small, reliable, cheap SSDs

[hojnikb]

Ideally I'd get a small SSD, but I don't know where to get very small, reliable, cheap SSDs

@TheRunningOtaku

Just get a used 32-64GB ssd from a decent brand and you're good to go.

 

 

At $8 for 16gb, it's $0.5/GB, and SSDs like the MX100 are still about $60 for 120GB so the price/GB isn't that high.

 

 

But once you go up the capacity, this ratio decreases in favor of ssds ... for example mx100 256gb comes at 43c per GB

[TheRunningOtaku]

 

 

Just get a used 32-64GB ssd from a decent brand and you're good to go.

The cheapest is a $44 SSD from Kingston at 60GB (It's using bad NAND but I won't complain, it's cheap)

for 4 computers it's $170+ for SSDs vs $32 for 4 16gb USBs

 

I know in Chromebooks they use 20gb SSDs but I'm not sure where to find those

Would http://www.amazon.com/KINGSPEC-KSD-SA25-7-SATA-II-CHANE-Solid/dp/B00JYB99O4/ref=sr_1_8?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1407660590&sr=1-8 be a good choice? For 4 PCs it's only $80, though I'm not sure about the performance of it and the reliability since it's a small brand. Does anyone have any experience with this drive?

[hojnikb]

these badboys have pretty crappy controller, but i guess for a simple linux install they should do the trick. Certanly better than flash drives.

[TheRunningOtaku]

I guess Thanks! I think that's all I need