so i just built a new file server. i’m trying to keep it as low power as possible. it’s quite minimal, with an atom processor, a mini itx intel motherboard and a wd “green” hard drive. that’s pretty much it. it should be drawing less than 30W and probably closer to 20W. i need to measure it. anyways, i want to keep the hard drive strictly for data, thus keeping the os separate. so i decided to install ubuntu server on a flash drive. pretty straightforward and easy. however, i got concerned about how long this flash drive would last if you run an os off of it. they only have a finite number of write cycles before being unusable.