Setting up a Cache Drive?

[Brandon_Byrnes]

I have a couple regular 7200rpm HDDs (one internal and two external). I would like to setup an old 250GB Samsung M.2 NVME drive as a cache drive for those HDDs.
First I was wondering is it possible to use one drive as a cache drive for multiple drives?
Second I was wondering is it possible to set up a cache drive for those external HDDs?
Third I was wondering does it significantly speed up read/write speeds for HDDs by having a SSD/M.2 drive as a cache drive?
And last I was wondering how exactly do I go about setting up a cache drive, lol? I found one video on YouTube but it’s in regards to servers and it’s from 2017. Also my external drives are 7200rpm USB 3.1 drives.

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon.

@PeterOz @Bruce

[PeterOz]

In my opinion only (let’s see what @Bruce says)
No real benefit in what you are trying to do
If you have an NVMe put windows on that.
All data - Music, Documents, Video on other drives

[Bruce]

+1

you are saving I/O on the externals by adding I/O to an internal.
you’d be moving the requests further upstream (or downstream depending on how the bus lanes are queued with USB3) - either way, you’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

your externals are 7200rpms on USB3, that’s pretty good.

most HDD’s come with about 256MB of cache and while this doesn’t help sequential tasks, it allows the drive to multitask, and of course, the bigger the cache, the more likely a request can be found in cache rather than performing a head movement. but there in lies the rub - what is the likelihood that subsequent data requests on an external drive will be in cache - it’s not like they are used for anything system file related, more ad-hoc, random stuff.

I really think you’d be looking at a mountain of setup time, ongoing maintenance with things like drive changes and maybe system updates, and all for (chances are) little to no discernible improvement.

but hey, that’s just me, but I would admit, it would be a good little project to sink your teeth into - especial if you had to do iso for 2 weeks.

[Bruce]

@Brandon Byrnes - still need help?

[Bruce]

closing