[Qiasfah]

I notice that they're using a 500GB 5400RPM boot drive.

Is there a need for that large of a boot drive? I would have expected that an SSD boot drive would be preferable.

[atYevP]

Yev from Backblaze -> We don't need the boot drive to be that "large", but it's more of a pricing thing. An SSD, even at 256GB would be more expensive than those 5400RPM drives, so we just go with what's cheap :)

[greglindahl]

Reliability has a cost, too. You can get a 60GB SSD for cheap (Amazon suggests it's about the same price as the slow 500GB HDD), and the SSD will fail at a much lower rate than that HDD.

[derekp7]

What about network boot? Or do you find that to be too unreliable?

[devit]

Amazon apparently sells a bunch of 64GB and 120GB SSDs for less than the $53 cost of your boot drive.