I’m new to this stuff so go easy on me.

So I want to get into selfhosting, and I’ve decided to get a Raspberry Pi 5. I plan to attach drives to it, from about 500GB-1TB. I’m on a budget, preferably under $100.

I want to host these things:

  • A personal lemmy instance
  • A samba server, to store files and backups
  • A mail server
  • A few other light docker containers

I was wondering whether I should get an SSD or an HDD for these. Lemmy would probably like an SSD because it uses Postgres, but an HDD would be better for storage since I get more GB per dollar.

What should I go with?

  • @brygphilomenaEnglish
    2•5 months ago

    You can get an older model Samsung Evo 1tb SSD new for under $100. Those have been good drives for me.

    You can probably find something to shuck used if you don’t care too much for reliability.

    Regardless, get a second disk even something attached to your main PC to handle backups.

    RPi are nice, but imo are getting expensive and if you aren’t using the i/o pins just not worth it. If I were to just start out again I’d pickup a used laptop. Higher specs than a RPi and built in battery backup.