Questions before buying: what with a large HDD as system drive?

Hi!
I'm about to buy a HP N54L to build my new NAS and would like to use OMV as the operating system.
But I have doubts about the system drive on which install OMV.
Since I don't have an old hard drive and the use of an USB flash drive is depracated, I'm looking for a cheap hard drive to buy.
The cheapest one I've found is a 2.5" disk with 500GB of space, but I do not want to sacrifice the whole space just for configuration files.
I then looked for a guide to be able to use also the system disk for storage.
On the old forum I found a guide on this thread but I confess that I do not understand any of the 4 proposed methods (the method 4 is in the second post).
Could someone be so kind to post a guide as simple as possible for me that don't use linux?
This to see if the hard drive that I would like to buy can be fully exploited with OMV.
Many thanks!

Zitat von crisman

In my honest opinion you should use only the disk for OS and nothing else, see if you could go for an 30/60 GB SSD, the price is not much more expensive than the sata's 500 Gb 2.5".

Thank you for the answer. Thanks to Dennis too!
The SSD disk less expensive that I find from my vendor costs more than double the cheapest 2.5" disk...

Zitat von KM0201

First, just want to say I'm not that familiar with the G7 N54L, I'm just looking at internet specs to try and provide an answer. It appears to come with a 250gig drive.. is there any reason you cannot use it for the OS? You'd probably need a 5.25x3.5 bay adapter, but those can be had pretty cheap. With drive sizes being what they are (with 2-3TB drives being pretty affordable), I'd consider 250gigs expendable... My NAS that I built, the OS sits on a 160gig drive. Yeah, I have about 150gigs of "dead space".. but I have 4tb total w/ my other drives... so it's not a big concern to me. If you're cutting it that close on storage, you might want to consider bigger data drives.

Also, have you considered eBay? You can find new/refurb/used 2.5in sata drives in the 80-160gig range for around $30-$40 USD. Again, you'd probably want to look at a bay adapter for a platter drive, but they are not that expensive. You don't mention what country you're in, but I'm assuming you're in Europe somewhere, so you should be able to find something on eBay I would think. http://www.ebay.com/itm/120GB-…rives&hash=item56681983e0

Broken laptops, netbooks, etc. can also be a good source for 2.5in drives. You might have a friend or relative that has one laying around that will let you have the hard drive for free/very cheap.

Just my personal opinion (and I don't know what shipping would be to your area obviously), but at the cost of the N54L, I would build a NAS rather than buy one. $400 is pretty steep for what is pretty meager hardware.

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Thanks to all for replies!
About the N54L: this microserver comes in 2 versions. One with 2gb ram and a 250gb drive, the second comes with 4gb ram and no HHD inside.
The first version il sold at high price, but I can find the second one at 160€ shipped, that is not a bad price (I think)...
After some research, I found an Intel 320 series 40Gb at 32€ shipped (the 500gb is at 39€ shipped).
So I think I'll buy the SSD.
Thanks for help!