TimTheSettler

Sounds like syncthing might be the way to go for you. Install that on all the Windows machines and your unRAID server (I assume you have unRAID since you're here although it's not explicitly mentioned). Hard drive space gets to be the issue here. You can connect all the devices together so that all data is shared on all devices and you can even encrypt data on certain devices. For example, you could have it do a four-way sync between all devices where the docs and pics show up as encrypted on the child's device. The other option is to sync all devices to the unRAID server. This is what I do. All phones and devices see and sync to the unRAID server. They don't see or sync among themselves since they don't have the space for all that data. In the example below I have a number of folders (27) shared across seven devices. The "Audio" folder is encrypted and the "Pictures (Phone)" folder is a send-only folder. The syncthing01/02/03/04 devices are my main file/backup servers so all folders are synced among those machines. Only certain folders are synced to syncthing05 (limited space) and only a couple folders (camera/pics) are shared with the phone/tablet devices. When you set all this up you need to think about where you want the data to be on each device and will there be space for that data on those devices. The only other option is to use regular SMB shares.

For anyone interested in what @positronicP and @tjb_altf4 are talking about you can read about it here --> https://blog.westerndigital.com/host-managed-smr-dropbox/ As @tjb_altf4 points out, Dropbox uses HM-SMR (Host-managed SMR) but the host (OS) needs to be aware of this technology for it to be of use. So for most of us we're talking about DM-SMR (Device-managed SMR - as mentioned by @tjb_altf4 above). Maybe at some point in the future HM-SHR will be supported by Linux and unRAID. I personally think that if you have cache drives then DM-SMR is ok as a regular drive.

The ultimate solution would be an app where you specify a folder and tell it to create a disc archive. It then reads the directory structure into memory and splits up the files so that they fit optimally on a bunch of discs. You then insert the discs and it burns them and records a serial number which can be used to link back to the disc's contents. Since this process is a manual one you would need to run the archival process manually. Each time it runs it collects the directory structure and compares it to the last one and creates new discs for changed and new files. Similar to a backup app but it would need to know which disc the proper version of the file is on. It would also need a feature where a new disc can be created which can replace an existing but lost or destroyed disc (same content as previous disc but with new serial number recorded in the app). A simpler version is that you use Brasero to burn a disc and then separately have a script that reads the disc, records the files on it, links them to an ID, and puts all the data into a database (or Excel). Let me know when you have either of these built.

The Microsoft site shows no such restriction. In fact you can create a Windows VM with only one pinned CPU (although a paired CPU/thread is recommended). Also note that CPU pinning simply limits the app/VM to using only that CPU. unRAID will use that CPU depending on the load of the server. To make the CPU pin exclusive you need to use CPU isolation. In general, @Gragorg's advice is good. I don't mean to slag what he's saying. It's just that you should use what you have right now because it's what you've got and might be all you need. If you find that you need more power then change the VM to have more CPUs or RAM and if you're maxing out the resources of your unRAID server then upgrade the hardware. This is easy to do and unRAID will simply see a more powerful engine under the hood. The beauty of the VM concept is that you can fiddle with the CPU/RAM assignments to get the desired performance you want. If anyone feels that this advice is wrong then please correct me. My goal here is to get people using unRAID without them having to spend money on a system they may not need. It's very easy to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM without impacting your server. I've already done it.

Shares are controlled by user access, not by machine access. You can't restrict access to a share based on the machine that's accessing it. Although you don't log in, Windows will have created a user for you. It's just that this is the only user for that computer. The drawback here is that this user does not have a password so if you want to restrict access through a share you'll need to give this user a password or create another user with a password. I recommend that you create another user and give this user a password (first create the user without a password and then give this user a password - doing this bypasses the security questions that Microsoft adds when giving the user a password). This user will be a special user that unRAID uses to access that computer. You can continue to use your main user that you do today without a password (nice and easy to log in to Windows). Once you do that you can create your share and then change the permissions by removing "Everyone" and replacing this with the user that you just created. When you create the share in unRAID it will ask you for a user name and password at which point you provide this new user and its password.

There was a time when I saw these used by companies (as replacements to tape backups) but no one does that anymore. It was always expensive technology and is still so. However, I loved the idea that seldom used stuff (based on modify date or access date) would be archived off but can be brought back automatically without human interaction. The OS or software would know where that file is. I think this is what you're referring to but as I mentioned, almost no one uses it and it's expensive. I use a CD suitcase and burn things like pictures to DVDs (or now Blu-Ray) from time to time. It's a manual process but pretty easy. Keep an Excel file with the disc number, it's contents, and date it was burned. If the disc gets old (10 years?) then burn a new copy of the files that were on it and update the speadsheet.

I researched this myself and in the end I chose Vorta (Borg) because of a recommendation from a friend who is a Linux administrator. He uses it in a production setting so how can you beat that? Anyway, Borg is free and it's pretty powerful but it's a command line utility. I prefer a GUI interface which is where Vorta comes in. Vorta is a docker app you can download in unRAID and it's a GUI interface to Borg. Although Vorta is a bit kludgy it does the trick. You can create one or more archives and each archive is encrypted. One other feature I like is the ability to mount an archive point. So if you need a file from a week ago then you mount that archive date and pull the file out. The decision for you is, do you create one archive or many? Each archive benefits from deduplication but the more you put into an archive means that it's harder to manage that archive. I have multiple archives so that I can control the schedule and docker. Each archive has it's own docker app because I found that trying to create multiple archives in a single Vorta docker didn't work as I expected. Within each archive I keep many archive points (dates/snapshots) because there's no reason not to with deduplication. Can you clarify what you mean here? In Vorta you can see the progress and check the archive. In your case you just need one archive.

What itimpi is saying is that what you have now will be the same on unRAID. Today you have 8TB in 3x4TB drives and with unRAID you will have the same thing because in both cases one drive is lost to parity. You don't need lots of different raid arrays. The array acts as one big pool of storage. This is how all NAS systems work. But you can definitely create lots of shares or directories on that array. A share is just a folder with special permissions that can be seen from outside of the system. Your VM doesn't need to use a share but it can if you want it to. The VM image's "hard drive" would just be a directory on the array. Maybe @itimpi can help clarify how the Windows VM would work. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear or being helpful. Sorry, if that's the case. The best thing is to just give it a try. If your existing hard drives have data on them, data that you want to keep, then DON'T use them in the new unRAID system since unRAID will format the drive. All NAS systems will do that. The best thing is to use new drives that are either empty or you don't mind overwriting and then copy the data from the old drives to the new unRAID system. Once the old drives are empty you just plug them into unRAID and then you have more storage.

I have less powerful machines that are running unRAID (as you can see in my signature below). Lots of people do. The trick is what you plan to do with the unRAID system. That might overtax it down the road. But not to fret. What I did was I repurposed an old computer I had lying around and put unRAID on it. I used it for a week or so but found it to be underpowered so I upgraded the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The nice thing about unRAID is that the OS sits on the USB stick and you can basically plug it in wherever you want or replace all the hardware. unRAID is a NAS with the ability to run dockers and VMs but note that you must have a compatible motherboard and CPU for VM capability. Use this link to read more about this (https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/VM_Management#Determining_HVM.2FIOMMU_Hardware_Support). I know what you mean by using "one hard drive" but unRAID doesn't work like the multi-boot system you have right now. Your hard drives (or single hard drive) become "the array" which simply means that they all appear as one big drive that all apps and VMs will use as storage. If you use an app to back up your data then you're data is safe but since unRAID is a NAS you can add more hard drives and designate one or two of these drives as a parity drive. Now the system has redundancy so that if a drive fails you simply replace it and your VMs will never know that something happened. No need to restore from the backup.

I've had a few computer failures over the past 30 years. Only once has a motherboard started to misbehave but it never truly died (I had to move the video card to another PCI slot). In most cases it's the power supply that goes (although you at first assume it's the motherboard). I would have to say that out of all the of hardware I've run in all the computers that I've owned the most problematic has been the hard drives, the power supply, and the case fans. Of all those things the hard drives are the most painful to lose. After all, the power supply and case fans are easily replaceable. This is why I buy enterprise-class drives. Partially for reliability, partially for performance, and mainly for the warranty. Even I know that these things can still fail. In fact, one of my Exos drives has problems right now (reallocated sectors) but thanks to unraid I'm not worried. I will replace that drive soon and get a replacement from Seagate. The following is a list of my oldest computers. The two that are retired were retired in the past two years simply because they were old and were replaced by newer machines. Nothing wrong with any of them. What I'm getting at here is that I think your two computers will last for quite a while and one backs up the other so don't worry. However, @Hoopster has a good point about staying ahead of the curve and not letting things go until they die. The reason I usually wait for things to die is that I can't be bothered to keep up with all the technology changes from year to year. So if you're like me then wait until one of the computers dies at which point you fail over to the other computer and then look at replacing both of them with two new computers. But if you enjoy chasing all the tech changes then buy one new computer every couple of years. The new computer would then replace the old which becomes your backup.

As JonathanM points out, it's good to have a backup. My backup server (separate machine and at another location) runs daily and since all backup software nowadays uses deduplication it doesn't use much space and I can keep daily, incremental changes. If someone encrypts my data with a ransomware attack then I just restore from a day or two back when the data was clean. The following is a screenshot of my backup archive for my Pictures folder (I use Vorta based on Borg).

I used to run a Windows domain so I got used to the sub-folder/file level permissions. That was hard to leave behind but in the end I like what I have now. When I was figuring all this out (on pen and paper) I asked myself, do I really need all this granularity? I had this problem in Windows and I narrowed it down to the anti-virus (Windows Defender). It could be that something is grabbing the file you are trying to transfer and holding onto it which then causes the transfer to fail if the file is not let go in time. (For example, let me transfer this file from here to there. Anti-virus steps in and says, wait a second, let me check that file first. It takes a while to check the file and in the end the transfer has timed out.) Note that if you move or copy files from some external location (externally connected drive or docker app) then that file has the permissions of that external location (probably root). If you then try to move this file in your share then you won't have permission (since the share uses "nobody"). In this case you'll need to run the "Docker Safe New Perms" tool. This tool replaces all permissions on all shares to nobody. You get this tool when you install the "Fix Common Problems" plug-in.

Hi Electro. If you're doing all this from within your home network then you don't need NextCloud and you don't need a VPN (Wireguard). Just create a couple users and a couple shares and then read and write your data like a normal Windows shared folder.

Hello. I can help with some answers if you're still interested.

I should've mentioned that the best thing to do when you're up and running is to plan out the shares and users BEFORE you create them. Do this in Excel with users listed along the side and shares along the top then mark off which users need access to which share and what kind of access they need. You might find a lot of duplication. The more shares and users you have will mean more complication. Also plan out why you need the shares and the users. In my system I wanted somewhat open access to media (audio and video), more restricted access to family stuff, and a completely restricted "home" folder for each member in the family. So, in the end, each user has their own share (private), there's a common share (private), and a media share (secure). This is what my SMB settings look like:

I agree with JohnathanM, try again later but what app are you trying to install? I will try to install it on my test server and let you know if it worked or not.

If you're having trouble with one or two apps that are "not available" then you should install this. I was running Unraid 6.11.5 and I had problems with the MeTube app. It's the same solution in trurl's link above but there's no need to read through the whole thread to know that you need this docker patch.

If you're having trouble with one or two apps that are "not available" then you should install this. I was running Unraid 6.11.5 and I had problems with the MeTube app.

If you're having trouble with one or two apps that are "not available" then you should install this. I was running Unraid 6.11.5 and I had problems with the MeTube app.

Look for this in the apps and install it. It will fix your problem. No need to reboot.

@JonathanM I found the Docker Patch plug-in and installed it. That fixed my problem. Thanks. But I have to say that this was not easy to find. What I mean is that I searched a lot and read a lot of posts about the "not available" and couldn't easily find this Docker Patch thing. I'll update the threads that I read through to point to the patch.

Sorry, I'm not sure which "docker update patch" you're referring to. All plugins on this server are up-to-date and I'm running Unraid 6.11.5 as noted in my signature below. Server was last rebooted three weeks ago.

Just a note that the app has the same problem on a different server in a different location.

Thanks for the update alexta69. Unraid has a built-in updater and it works for all other apps but not for MeTube. There's a post somewhere saying that the place it looks at might have been changed so it can't find the update info there anymore. Where do you see "Force Update"? The "Update" option only shows up when Unraid knows there is an update and my problem is that Unraid does not seem to know. Am I the only one who has this problem? Just to be clear, it's only MeTube that is giving me this problem as you can see below. If no one knows then in a couple days I will remove the app and re-install it. Hopefully that will fix it but that's not really the right solution.

Note that TRIM is just a command that any drive can support. It's used in SMR as pointed out by primeval_god above (because the behaviour of SMR is similar to SSD) but it can also be used by a CMR drive although there's a debate (link below) about whether a CMR drive with TRIM is really just an SMR drive. But consider that TRIM is designed to mark an allocation unit as deleted. So instead of actually clearing all those bits you only need to mark the whole block as cleared and it's assumed that all bits in the block are cleared. It's actually a great way to pre-clear a disk (see the Western Digital article below - in the HDD Initialization section). CMR Drive with TRIM Feature https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/y1dyfp/cmr_drive_with_trim_feature/ Trim Command - General Benefits for Hard Disk Drives https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-purple-hdd/whitepaper-generic-benefit-for-hard-disk-drive.pdf