Hello, been lurking for a while and I am finally setting up a home nas with unraid.

 

I have x2 8tb hdd and x2 1 tb m.2

 

I was thinking the best setup would be to have the hdds as storage, one being parity, then the m.2s as a cache pool, one being parity. This system is for my family to use as backup for their photos and whatever they need. Anyway before I go ahead am I doing this wrong, if so is there another way I should set this up? Appreciate any help!

That is basically right, xfs for disk1, zfs mirror for cache pool

No Wrong way to setup Unraid. It's designed to be tailored to your needs.

 

Having the 2 x 8TB in the array with 1 set as parity will give you 8tb of usable space with resiliency against a single drive failure. I recommend XFS for the array file system, this way no data on the array is loaded into ARC, just the cache pool. 

 

Setting up a pool of 2 x 1TB NVME in a mirror (I recommend ZFS as this will use ARC cache also, which is RAM) this configuration will provide resiliency against a single drive failure. 

 

When creating your shares, you can decide if you want the data to be stored on the Array or Cache pool or Both with the mover moving data between them. I would recommend setting your appdata and system shares (default docker / virtual machine shares) to use Cache only and setup your shares to use cache first then array second. (most common setup) Ensure you mover is scheduled frequent enough so you don't use up the cache pool.

 

You will be able to add additional drives to your array with a simple preclear and add but the cache pool won't be able to be expanded easy.

 

Hope this makes things more clear.

 

Beercules.

Edited March 11, 20251 yr by Beercules