Ways in which to use a non-pooled SSD drive spare?

[par]

I have space in my NAS for an extra drive and was going to throw in a small 64GB SSD.

I have a low-power CPU and am thinking this might be good for ZFS cache, on the other hand I have 16GB of RAM. Should I test write speeds both with/without the cache SSD?

What I would rather use this spare drive for is temporary downloads through Transmission. I have not tested this yet as to install plugins I require a ZFS pool, but will the official plugins play nice with storing their download data on a non-pooled UFS volume?

 

[cyberjock]

If you are happy with your server's performance I wouldn't use the SSD at all. Adding stuff just to add stuff isn't wise. And if you have problems with mounting your pool someday the extra hardware could make recovery much more difficult. Put the SSD on your desk, you'll find a use for it someday.

 

[par]

Is my ZFS pool not going to have a problem with constant reads/writes from things like SABnzbd article downloads and unraring? I know in WHS it was advised *not* to use the storage pool for these purposes. That is partly where I am coming from thinking that SSD could be used for temporary storage. I know it complicates the system but the idea is I would not put extra ware on my storage pool for what are effectively temporary files.