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Mixed speed disks


StepSideways

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Hi,

I have a question, I've tried looking around online but, alas, cannot find the answer.  I've been happily using drivepool for many years and am about to rebuild my server (as it needs more disks and the case is rusting), so I will use this opportunity to make the server better.

Currently I run a single pool with 5 disks between 3 and 4tb each and 5900rpm in speed.  I have bought 2 new 8TB disks which are 7900rpm, and my assumption is that I am better off making them into their own pool so that all their operations run at their own speed, and move some data from the main pool to this new one, and I can gradually replace the disks over the years to all be 7900rpm.

I'm also fitting a 240gig m.2 ssd to go along with the spare 240gig ssd and to start using the ssd  optimiser plugin.

So my question is, am I being silly worrying about making the faster disks into their own pool, should I just stick them in the main pool, and does the approach with the ssd optimiser seem sensible?

Note:  The primary use of the server is Photos, Plex and as a Minecraft server, the Plex DB and Minecraft goes on the C:\ (500gb m.2) and backs up to the pool, the pool is mostly used for reading photos, music and video files, so I don't know if I'm wasting my time with the SSD optimiser if it mostly helps with the writing to the disk..

Thanks

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So I think it is a matter of use case and personal taste. IMHO, just use one Pool. If you're going to replace the 5900rpm drives anyway over time anyway. I assume you run things over a network. As most are still running over 1Gbit networks (or slower), even the 5900rpm drives won't slow you down.

I've never used an SSD Optimizer plugin but yeah, it is helpful for writing, not reading (except for the off-chance that the file you read is still on the SSD). But even then it would need a datapath that is faster than 1Gbit all the way.

What you could do is test a little by writing to the disks directly outside the Pool in a scenario that resembles your usecase. If you experience no difference, just use one Pool, makes management a lot easier. If anything, I would more wonder about duplication (do you use that?) and real backups.

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I use x2 duplication over the whole pool, I expect I won't get a lot out of the SSD optimiser then, but I'll set it up anyway just for the sake of making the server marginally better, for example when we finish a holiday and upload many gigs of photos and holiday videos it may help.

 

I think in which case I'll put it in one pool and save myself the hassle of multiple pools..

I have 2 strategies for backups in addition to x2 duplication, I have the amazon photos desktop app running, but it is a rubbish application and often takes a lot of poking to make it work, I've also added a removable HDD bay to run backups of the most important data to.  I'm considering stablebit cloud drive application but I don't know how helpful it will be yet.

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If you use x2 duplication and want to use the SSD Optimizer plug-in, you'll need two SSDs (or play around with hierarchical Pools, then you can do it with one SSD (or at least that has been written here, I actually consider that a bug and maybe it is "solved" but I could tell you how to do it.)). And yes, I imagine that if you do it will make a difference when you upload that much provided that there is no other bottleneck (1Gb Lan for instance).

On Clouddrive as a backup: No idea.

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