Take my setup for jellyfin as an example: There’s a database located on the SSD and there’s my media library located on an HDD array. The HDD is only spun up when jellyfin wants to access a media file.

In my previous setup, the nextcloud database was located on a HDD, which resulted in the HDD never spinning down, even if the actual files are never really accessed.

In immich, I wasn’t able to find out if they have this separation, which is very annoying.

All this is moot, if you simply offer a tiny service which doesn’t access big files that aren’t stored on SSDs.

Please be mindful of HDD spindown.

If your app frequently looks up stuff in a database and also has a bunch of files that are accessed on-demand, then please have an option to separate the data-directory from the appdata-directory.

A lot of stuff is self-hosted in homes and not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated server room.