I've searched and read the wiki and I still can't get my head around my new cache drive. This is what I think is happening.

 

The scenario: utorrent server downloads a torrent to the cache drive and then within the plugin I have told it to move the completed torrent to my torrent share.

 

Now if I'm reading it right, this is a good thing because it doesn't evoke the parity drive until the torrent completes and moves over to array, so just a single write.

 

My question is how does the mover work if I didn't specify the "move upon completion" within utorrent plugin? How does it know where to put things?

 

Do I create a same named folder on the cache drive and check the option in the share to "yes" use cache drive and it will move it over at the default 3am?

 

OR does it work seamlessly, ie I point my plugin to //mnt/user/Torrents but in actual fact it downloads it to cache and puts a marker down for when the mover works?

 

But that doesn't answer the question of if I simply move a file from my computer to //mnt/cache/ where does the mover put it for its permanent home on the array.

 

Please help :-)

OR does it work seamlessly, ie I point my plugin to //mnt/user/Torrents but in actual fact it downloads it to cache and puts a marker down for when the mover works?

 

This is what it does. When you write to the array it will actually write to the cache drive. In your case you'll notice a folder called "Torrents" on the cache. The mover then compares the shares user/Torrents and user0/Torrents (auto created when you use the cache dir) and moves the appropriate files.

 

You would actually want to set your torrent client to move to //mnt/user/Torrents when completed. If that share is set to use the cache drive the file will be put on the cache until the mover is invoked.

 

When you move files from your computer to the array dont put them on the cache just put them in the correct share. These files will then be written to the cache in the background while appearing in your share. If you want to put it directly on the cache just make a folder with the same name as the share and put it in there.

 

If you just throw the file on the root of the cache it will create another share named the same as the file when the mover is kicked off.

thanks for the speedy reply!

 

You would actually want to set your torrent client to move to //mnt/user/Torrents when completed. If that share is set to use the cache drive the file will be put on the cache until the mover is invoked.

 

So in actual fact if I set the torrent share to use the cache drive, I can download several files and do all the post processing without evoking the parity/array until the mover kicks OR I'm ready to move it to the correct location on the array, so saving the other drives from spinning up?

Yup. The way I look at it is similar to say a print statement in code.

 

The cache drive is a buffer for the share and just like when calling a print statement the buffer is filled without actually writing to the display. Its only when this buffer is filled or after a certain time interval that this buffer is flushed and the content written.

 

In our servers the cache drive is this buffer and the mover is invoked at the time interval. The data is then flushed to the array.

 

 

To write something to the array without first writing to the cache would require you to turn off the cache for that share or write directly to the disk (ie /disk1/Torrents)

thanks for the speedy reply!

 

You would actually want to set your torrent client to move to //mnt/user/Torrents when completed. If that share is set to use the cache drive the file will be put on the cache until the mover is invoked.

 

So in actual fact if I set the torrent share to use the cache drive, I can download several files and do all the post processing without evoking the parity/array until the mover kicks OR I'm ready to move it to the correct location on the array, so saving the other drives from spinning up?

 

Really you want to set all your shares to use the cache drive unless you have a specific reason not to. This way once the post processing of your files is done you can have it move them to the movies share or tv shows share all without spinning your array disks up.

Just another random note. Using a cache will also keep the disks from becoming fragmented. If you are torrenting its writing lots of chunks of the file. If you have multiple of these going at the same time they may not be written together. The moves insures that each files is moves separately and 1 at a time thus decreasing the fragmentation.

And another note. Any file still on cache is not protected by parity. Probably obvious but just thought I'd put it out there anyway. Different people use their cache in different ways. I only cache the share with NZBs and torrents. When finished downloading and no longer seeding I manually move them to their final destination in a parity protected share. Like most, I also have a cache-only share for app's working storage.

thanks all, I've put all heavy read/write shares on the cache and it's working well.