5304T (with 4 drives installed) AND an EXTERNAL SSD

[kaosguy]

I recently got a 5304T and populated it with four 10 TB IronWolf drives.
Configured as RAID 1 and mostly used for Plex. (I'm not excessively worried about losing the data.)

I'm wondering about adding an external SSD drive through the Asustor's USB port.

I have a 2 TB SSD drive lying around, just need an enclosure, so no great expense.
Is this worth it?

Will the Asustor use the SSD automatically?
Do I need to configure something on the NAS so the SSD is effectively used?

Thanks.

[orion]

That's actually not related to SSD. The part that NAS deal with is USB device. If your USB device (to put your SSD) is normal USB storage device, that should work. ADM should treat it as an external disk. However the file system format on your SSD drive should be valid (NTFS, FAT32, ...).

[kaosguy]

Sorry, I didn't word my question well...
I understand that I can use the SSD (properly formatted) as an external drive through the USB port.
That would allow me to move files between the NAS and the SSD -- not my goal.

I'm wondering if the NAS can use the SSD as a sort of high speed cache, to speed up transfers from the NAS generally.
I assume that the NAS DOESN'T do this (or at least not by default), but I'm wondering if the NAS can be persuaded to do so.
Some utility or other...

[orion]

I assume that the NAS DOESN'T do this (or at least not by default), but I'm wondering if the NAS can be persuaded to do so.
Some utility or other...

No, NAS won't treat this external SSD as cache. The cache device should be some of internal slots.
Theoretically you can achieve this function by your own in case that you are familiar with Linux and ADM internal tasks. If I were you, I won't put this efforts.

[kaosguy]

Thanks.
I may give up 1 of the 4 slots for an internal SSD...

[Mr. Floppy]

Hi,
I had the same question in my mind. Similar situation. So if a "normal" external case didn't work, is the case AS6004U working with SSD as an cache?

[kaosguy]

Mr. Floppy.
The answer, I've learned is... if you want an SSD cache, it has to take up a drive bay.
But I've also learned that the SSD cache is probably not a big help to either: transfer files more rapidly (unless you have a lot of users) or speed up Plex transcoding (if that was the hope).

[Thor76]

ANyone using one or two cache disks know how they work? Are they only used for file copy cache, or will it cache apps there as well? I have a lot of IO usage on the RAID when not using it. I'd like to move all the apps over to SSD. I've tried with external SSD, but couldn't move apps or symlink data folders (such as Plex Metadata).
As all the four slots are taken, I'm contemplating getting a AS6004U. Could I connect this and move my 4 RAID5 disks and have them appear in the AS6004U automatically?
If so, then I could add 2 SDDs to the 5304T, and have read and write cache. BUT, my main question is then can/will all the ASUSTOR apps and databases be moved to the SSD cache? Or should I use half the SSDs for cache and the other half as a file system so that the apps can be moved here? I've found basically no information on this, and I know that the competitors have such features.