I would very highly recommend using multiple smaller server grade HDDs instead of one big HDD, and software raid them. If on windows 10, use storage spaces. If on Linux, use zfs. Hard drives will fail and it’s a pain in the ass to rebuild a 5-6tb media library when it does. Ask me how I know 😂
Also, definitely use internal drives. You can shuck the HDD out of the external enclosure and it will work perfectly fine as an internal drive. Bonus, you now have an HDD to USB adapter 😁
I’m personally using Windows 10 pro on an old lga775 supermicro server, with my old graphics card for hardware transcoding. Yeah it’s inefficient and loud but that server board is stable as fuck and cheap as dirt. In windows 10 pro you can set group policies to basically debloat the OS, and there’s also a great debloat script on GitHub. My idle CPU usage went from 20% to 3% just from the scripts and group policies.
I have to fix a fax machine in ICU tomorrow morning 😭