I currently have a external SSD connected via usb and that is a major bottleneck. I encounter freezing when the disc is writing, but when i just stream media it plays flawlessly. Link (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DDC36S1/)
Will a HDD work for my purposes? I have a fast internet connection and a gpu on my server so I can definitely handle a lot of users and transcode. However, I only share my server with one other person currently because the freezing happens anytime i'm basically downloading new media. The end goal is to have flawless playback/performance for myself and users even if something is being written to the HDD.
do I need a NaS if I can just connect like 4~ HDDs to my server and set that up with raid? is raid overkill?
Are you seeing high IOWait? How did you determine that it's an IO issue?
I can download/write + stream to multiple users off a HDD that's MUCH slower than your SSD without any issues, so I suspect something else is going on.
Will a HDD work for my purposes?
HDDs are much slower than an SSD, like more than 30,000x slower on IOPS.