Romex Software Forum

Hey there PrimoCache Team! I love getting extended value from my old hardware and tinkering with it, so i ended up with this rather convoluted PrimoCache setup. The part with the tiered storage spaces is still planned so i like to know if it does make any sense at all. Will there be a any benefit from adding a fast nvme ssd as cache for an already tiered combination of windows storage spaces (sata ssd + hdd) or will my system just be overwhelmed with all the background copying?

Thanks in advance.

If you are building a new system, I recommend that you install Windows OS and frequently used applications/games on the nvme SSD. Then if you still have spare space on the nvme drive, you can use these spare space as level-2 cache.

Welcome to the forums KaffeemitZimt,

I'd agree with Support and suggest that your current setup seems (overly?) elaborate. In particular, data that is rarely used (or doesn't benefit from high read/write speeds, like media files) shouldn't be cached at all (your "Cold Storage" disks may well fall into this category). Also caching to high speed drive "X" will never be as good as storing data directly on "X" in the first place.

With these two points in mind I'd suggest the following setup:
* Windows and applications on 512GB NVMe;
* less important applications on the 512GB SSD, formatted as volume D: (only if the NVMe drive isn't large enough to store them all);
* "non-speed-critical" data on the RAID-1 array (2x2TB HDD);
* image backups of your NVMe/SSD drives on the remaining 2TB HDD.

That leaves one 256GB SSD - I'd suggest identifying your most critical files and using synchronisation/file versioning software to keep automated backups of them onto this.

With the above setup, L2 caching may not be necessary (I'd suggest running without it at first) and you can keep all your L1 cache for your NVMe drive (plus maybe the 512GB SSD). Windows Storage Spaces (WSS), like RAID-1+, only covers drive failure - not other threats to data like accidental overwrites, deletion or ransomware, so you still need backups to guard against data loss. With the above setup, I would suggest that WSS can be ignored.