I am considering replacing my current 2 × 4 TB SSD RAID 0 with a single 6 TB Seagate BarraCuda ST6000DM003 HDD, and using an SSD as cache.

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I have a QNAP TS-264 which I currently use mainly for storing and streaming movies to a Smart TV.

I am considering replacing my current 2 × 4 TB SSD RAID 0 with a single 6 TB Seagate BarraCuda ST6000DM003 HDD, and using an SSD as cache.

Could you please confirm the following specifically for the TS-264:

  1. What types of SSD can be used for SSD caching? Can I use either:
    • the internal M.2 NVMe slots, or
    • a 2.5-inch SATA SSD,
      and are both supported for SSD Cache?
  2. What cache size would QNAP recommend for a 6 TB HDD containing approximately 2.6 TB of movie files, where the main workload is streaming movies to a Smart TV? Would a 120 GB SSD be adequate?
  3. Does the TS-264 support configuring the SSD cache as read-only, rather than read/write? If so, can read-only cache be used with a single HDD as the underlying storage?

I would appreciate answers specifically for the TS-264 rather than general QNAP recommendations for other NAS models.

Thank you.

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OK. First of all, if you read about caching on QNAP, it does not work well. We recommend NOT using it. Unless you have a lot of very small files you access a lot, the cache will slow things down.

Second, you should NEVER rely on a single drive as your cache. If that drive fails, all your data will be gone and there will be lots of tears.

If you want to use just a single 6TB drive then that’s fine. Just don’t use a cache.

Better use for NVME SSD drives is as a system volume (system volume - not OS as the OS is spread across all drives). But given the cost of SSD and flash memory, you are probably better off from a cost standpoint right now not using anything.

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And don’t forget to have a robust backup plan :slight_smile:

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I didn’t bother as I am pretty sure this was the same user who asked some questions elsewhere about using his RAID0 setup. When I suggested he not use RAID0, he said that’s what he wanted to use and that basically he was not concerned about drive failure and backups. OK. So if you don’t care then that’s on you.

But yes, I agree with you - one should have a robust backup plan, especially with a single drive or RAID0.

To @Sparks79 - FYI - A RAID0 configuration such as you have now is going to be faster than a single disk. So I would leave your configuration as-is and create a robust backup plan…