Unraid Newbie - NAS Build - Cache Disk & Plex Vers 6.9.1

[Korrath83]

Hi Guys,

 

I've just finished my first unraid build and am currently in the process of migrating data from my old QNAP NAS into my new Unraid server. I followed a couple of guides on youtube and currently have everything running smoothly.

 

The build itself is purely a NAS build and will mainly hold my Media for my Plex Server, personal documents, video for editing and photo's etc. The build I have could probably do more in future but at present I'm happy with Plex, Sab and the arr's running on their own NUC (10th Gen I5) and connecting to the Unraid server for the media only.

 

The Question I have is, my build has a 1tb Samsung 970 EVO NVME SSD in it (left over parts) and from the guides I watched and read it recommended having this in as a Cache drive while others have said its a waste of time. As mine is solely a NAS build with only occasional writes to the server is there any benefit to doing this? Or is it going to be negligible or just a hinderance. Any advice appreciated.

 

Oh and while I'm thinking about it, on the "Main" screen there is no section for Cache Devices, simply Pool Devices, is this a change with the new version and is it correct?

 

Thanks again

Edited March 15, 2021 by Korrath83

[JonathanM]

Yes, cache was a singular pool, now you can have multiple pools, so the name changed.

 

Assuming your signature is accurate, and you are only sending and receiving data over a 1GB LAN, then SSD write speed won't make very much if any difference in your day to day usage. If you decide to enable docker containers to migrate your plex and 'arrs to Unraid, or the vm service, then you would benefit.

 

If you do decide to start using containers, it's easier to set them up correctly with the SSD installed when you enable the docker service. If the docker service is enabled prior to there being a pool defined for it, the system will get created on the array drives and it's a several step procedure to get them moved properly.

[Korrath83]

Hi jonathanm, thanks for the advice. Yeah your right, I haven't made the jump beyond 1GB yet that will probably be a year or 2 before I do. So I suppose I'll leave it as mounted but not activate the cache to work with any of my shares. At least with it installed then its already set up for when I start looking at Docker a little more.

 

I'll get everything migrated and see what performance is like before exploring anything else, would think I have a fair bit of space with the spec but just want to make sure.

 

Cheers again