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Adding SSD to NAS to use for caching

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roldogg

Regular Contributor
I bought a QNAP TS-451+ about 4 months ago, and I bought 4 x 4TB WD Black drives to install in it and set them up in a RAID5 configuration.

After using this NAS since buying it and setting it up, I've continually read up on all the additional functionalities, the different QTS apps, learned how to stream audio, video, view pictures, etc from anywhere. I must say that this has been one of the best investments I've made in a long time, and with all the functionality, I feel like I haven't even touched the surface of its capabilities.

One thing I read about was setting up an SSD to use as a cache drive for certain content. I read about this after installing the NAS, but I wanted to know if it's possible to install an SSD as an external drive and use it as a cache drive since all my bays are full. If I can do this, will I have a bottleneck since the SSD isn't installed as an internal drive and I'll be relying on the data transfer speed of the USB3 connection? Is there another way to hook up an SSD as an external drive to my NAS, since I don't have any free drives, and not give up the benefit of the increase in speed of the SSD so it can be used as a cache drive properly?

If anyone has more knowledge about this, which is probably everyone, I would appreciate any suggestions. I have backups of all my PCs on this NAS and I have a Public Multimedia folder setup where anyone with access can view pictures, stream videos from my camera, or watch movies I've collected (which both range from 1080P 60fps to UHD resolution). I've noticed lots of buffering if I try streaming content in its original format and even in a lower format, which it them needs to transcode. I'm just trying to figure out a solution so no one has to experience buffering if they want to stream a video, or movie, at any resolution. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions about the SSD used as a cache drive or any other suggestions anyone might have. Thanks!
 
SSD cache likely is not going to help you - focus more on the links between the NAS and the end point, along with the content and use case...

The 451+, with Transcodes - it can handle a couple in real-time, but you really need to look at the content in general, and see why it needs to be transcoded in the first place - sometimes it's better to transcode/convert it offline rather than real-time...
 
No way to do what you're suggesting over USB. :(

Even if it was possible, you're right; it would be very, very slow and no apparent increase in effective speed.
 
Agreed, it's a fairly new NAS so I have plenty of room to transcode the videos. For example, I just got back from a 2 week vacation in Thailand, and I took my camera to take pictures, videos, etc and shared links to the photos/videos. All videos I record are in UHD resolution and each photo jpg in approx 15MB, the RAW picture files are about 43MB each, and I have 3500 total photos and videos. I'll just let my NAS work on transcoding. If I had to guess, the 2 people I'm going to share them with will probably use their phones to view the pictures/video. If so, they won't be able to tell the difference between a 3480 x 2160 video and a 640 x 480 video, besides the buffering.

The NAS really isn't that slow, just when trying to transcode on the fly, but I think most things would have trouble transcoding UHD video on the fly. I'm pretty happy with this QNAP, even though I'm only familiar with about 10% of its capabilities. I need to spend some time reading up on all the features, apps, etc it can do.

One more question, if I setup Virtualization Station, do I copy an image file of Windows 10 to it or something? I guess that's where I should start reading.
 
One more question, if I setup Virtualization Station, do I copy an image file of Windows 10 to it or something? I guess that's where I should start reading.

Read up on it - Win10 on VirtSta will need a license key, just like any other version of Windows that wasn't pre-installed.

Once you have a valid key, and the ISO - get the 64-bit version - it'll run fine - keeping in mind the CPU on the NAS box, so it might not be rocket fast...

With VirtSta running - probably want to have at least 4GB of RAM on the NAS - 8GB is better, IMHO...
 
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