Newbie cache drive question

[heffneil]

I ordered some hardware and I am currently reading the FAQ. I had two questions about write cache I hope i can get answered. They are:

 

1. Does the write cache count towards the total number of drives in the array? Im not sure but i believe the. Parity drive is counted as well in the total drives.

 

2. Can the write cache drive be added after the fact?  I haven't committed hardware to it but I would imagine you can add that later or even remove it if need be?

 

Thanks

 

Neil

[kenoka]

I ordered some hardware and I am currently reading the FAQ. I had two questions about write cache I hope i can get answered. They are:

 

1. Does the write cache count towards the total number of drives in the array? Im not sure but i believe the. Parity drive is counted as well in the total drives.

 

2. Can the write cache drive be added after the fact?  I haven't committed hardware to it but I would imagine you can add that later or even remove it if need be?

 

Thanks

 

Neil

 

1. Yes and no. A pro license gets you a total of 22 drives: 20 data, 1 parity and 1 cache.

2. Yes.

[Flomaster]

so I can have my 3 drive protected array and have a 4th cache drive outside of the array as well?

 

-=Jason=-

[dgaschk]

A Pro or Plus license will let you use a cache drive.

[JetShred]

so I can have my 3 drive protected array and have a 4th cache drive outside of the array as well?

 

-=Jason=-

 

I have a Plus license with 1 parity drive, 2 data drives, and 1 cache drive.  Everything that gets written to the cache drive gets moved over to the data drives nightly at 3:40 am.  If you want to keep things from being moved you can put them in dot folders (like .folder).  I keep my Sabnzbd install on the cache drive in a folder called .Sabnzbd.

[prostuff1]

There are a few other things you can do to keep folders from being moved by the mover script.  I edit my the mover script with some sed commands so that folders with an "_" in front are ignored.  I use my server from my Mac 95% of the time and the "." in front of the folder does not work for me.  It does not allow me to see it unless i turn on a few things and that is just annoying to do.

[smoldersonline]

@prostuff1: I (100% Mac) would be very grateful if you would be willing to share in some more detail how you did this.

[Flomaster]

well it looks like I am buying the plus-key and going to use my WD250 GB IDE drive I have, as its transfer speed was much better than my WD Caviar 250GB sata drive.

 

-=Jason=-

[prostuff1]

@prostuff1: I (100% Mac) would be very grateful if you would be willing to share in some more detail how you did this.

 

I use an unmenu .auto_install file to accomplish the task.  If you have unmenu installed you can create a file with a unix safe text editor called "mover-modify.auto_install"

 

In the file put:

#!/bin/bash

sed -i 's@\[\.\]\/\[\^\.\]\.\*\/\.\*@[.]/[^._].*/.*@' /usr/local/sbin/mover
sed -i 's@\[\.\]\/\[\^\.\]\.\*@[.]/[^._].*@' /usr/local/sbin/mover

 

Basically what this does it modify the mover script that is in place.  The above may look like complete jibberish but that is mostly because the character sequence i am searching for is a reg-ex and I am trying to find it with a reg-ex (circular loop kind of).  Anyway, i have to escape every character of the search string so that it actually works.

[JetShred]

@prostuff1: I (100% Mac) would be very grateful if you would be willing to share in some more detail how you did this.

 

I just open Finder and then Cmd+Shift+g to bring up the Go to Folder dialogue and then type something like this: /volumes/cache/.folder.

[smoldersonline]

Thanks for this feedback.

 

I think I prefer to exclude _folders from moving, but (newbie...) cannot find the auto_install option. I'm considering to copy a modified mover file in place (with the go script) but would need some guidance on where to put prostuff1's code in the mover file.

[Joe L.]

Thanks for this feedback.

 

I think I prefer to exclude _folders from moving, but (newbie...) cannot find the auto_install option. I'm considering to copy a modified mover file in place (with the go script) but would need some guidance on where to put prostuff1's code in the mover file.

You can just put those two "sed" commands at the end of your config/go script.

 

Cut them from his post, paste them at the end of the "go" script,

then reboot.

 

Joe L.

[smoldersonline]

Thanks Joe & prostuff1, works like a charm!