Selecting a boot drive

[mopeyjoe]

I have searched this forum high and low and not found a definitive answer to "How do I choose a proper boot drive"
What I want to know:
1) Drive size requirements ( minimum, avg needed for basics, i.e. samba)
2) drive speed requirements ( maybe two scenarios, simple NAS or workhorse)
3) type of drive. Flash vs HDD? SATA vs USB?

I am personally interested in the specs needed to run a simple network file server (SAMBA, DLNA/uPnP) with the chance of hooking up a webcam (if I can figure out how)

Thank you

[dinjo]

1. Bootable should be 1Gb minimum , you can attach other drive to store your data
2. ??
3. What exactly are you trying to do ? If you need faster data access SATA.

[WarheadsSE]

Spinning rust will always give you better system response, no matter what. And SATA reponds/is more robust @ reboots than USB.

[mopeyjoe]

I ended up going with a good mix drive. I guess I was trying to figure out if Random access or sequential read was more likely. also how much of the OS gets read into RAM. The drive I popped in seems to be fine. i'll post the speeds once I switch back to windows and have access to my file.