So I have read up on about everything I can find regarding this topic and watched space invaders video multiple times regarding the topic as well but was wondering if anyone may have some input regarding my current situation/setup.

 

Currently setting up a new server, mainly used for general file storage, Plex, sonarr, Radarr, Usenet DL, plus one windows 10 VM as a fairly light use workstation.

 

The build has 4 nvme drives, 2 x 1tb wd blue sn550s and 2 x 1tb wd black sn750s. My current thoughts are having the 2 blues together in one cache pool, raid 1, for protected write caching. 1 black is going to be strictly for the VM, I am doing this as my wife will primarily be using the VM as a work computer, direct connected with passed through video ect. and I wanted to keep it feeling as bare metal as possible. The other black I was planning on having for the docker containers and app data.

 

Where I am stuck is where I should throw my downloads that won't negatively impact performance too much. I may consider separating it completely if need be but would prefer not to. My initial thought is to put it with the app data/docker cache pool, I feel like this drive had more than enough speed to handle both jobs, but maybe I am wrong.

 

Any suggestions/feedback would be great, thanks everyone. 

Edited December 12, 20214 yr by MadMatt337

Probably not going to make much difference. Might make sense to put downloads on a pool separate from the pool you use for postprocessing, so unpacking reads from one pool and writes to another, for example.