Need help Seting up share parameters

[gary.e.mckee]

Ok to start off, I think I messed up when I originally setup my shares.

 

My file structure is:

Plex

     Movies

          (Movie Name)

     TV Shows

          {Show Name}

               (Series)

                    (Episode)

     Music

          {Artist)

 

How I originally set up my shares were:

High Water

Min Free Space = 100G

Automatically Split Only top 3 Directories

 

I have all 8 TB drives

 

What would happen, a drive would fill up to where only 35 Gig was free, then say no space left although there was more space on a different hard drive in the share.

 

After reading more on the documentation and different support questions, I think I should set thing up to High water = 100 Gig.  (I'm guessing the max size of movies would be about 70 Gig). I should also setup the structure to be most free to balance everything out.  I presently have 6 drives that the Plex share uses.  I should automatically split only top 2 directories.

 

If this is correct, please let me know and if I am wrong, what should my setting be.

 

The second part of my questions is some of my physical hard drives are 99% or more full.  I would like to move the movies using the terminal  and the linux move command to move the movies to a physical hard drive within the share that has more free space.  Should I do this with the array running or should I stop the array.?

[trurl]

22 minutes ago, gary.e.mckee said:

set thing up to High water = 100 Gig

Allocation Method is a multiple choice question. Highwater is one of those choices. There is no number associated with that. And I guess you don't mean Minimum Free = 100 Gig because you say that is already how it is set. So I don't know what you mean. 

 

Most Free is not the best for performance because it can result in constantly switching between disks just because one disk temporarily has more free space. Highwater is default for just that reason.

 

Possibly your problem is Split Level since that has precedence over Allocation Method and Minimum Free. If Split Level says files belong on the same disk, it is going to choose that disk regardless of the other settings.

 

Another thing that could be related is how exactly you put these files on your server to begin with. Did you copy a large number of files from some other source all in one batch? What details can you provide about how these files were put on your server?

[trurl]

32 minutes ago, gary.e.mckee said:

The second part of my questions is some of my physical hard drives are 99% or more full.  I would like to move the movies using the terminal  and the linux move command to move the movies to a physical hard drive within the share that has more free space.  Should I do this with the array running or should I stop the array.?

If you stop the array none of the disks are mounted so you can't access their contents with the array stopped.

 

It is extremely important that you not mix user shares and disks when moving or copying files. Linux doesn't know that user shares are just another view of the disks and so it could try to overwrite what it is trying to read if the paths work out that way.

 

Another thing that can be surprising when working at the Linux level is when working directly with the user shares. Linux sees these as all the same mount, so if you use the mv command (rename or move) to move files from one user share to another, Linux may decide to simply rename the path, and so the files stay on the same disk but under a different user share.

 

unBALANCE plugin is often used for shuffling files around. I personally use Midnight Commander since it is built-in and if you are familiar with Linux you probably already know about it.

 

[gary.e.mckee]

I didn't mean highwater = 100G,  I should have said highwater and min free space 100 G.  My bad.

 

It's been years since I put al lot of the files on my unraid system.  I started at Version6.3.3 and recently upgraded.  I believe I downloaded the files and put them in the proper share.  IE put a movie in share Plex,Movie, (movie name).  I don't recall installing a number of files on the hard disk itself.  Meaning in did not put files on a partition on /dev/sda thenl unraid on this disk. 

 

As far as my wanting to move files around, I was thinking of moving the files from /dev/sda /dev/sdb etc.  I just looked and realized I can't see files that way.  Now I know what you mean about screwing thing up.  I will look at Midnight Commander, but I can't find it.  I am assuming it is run from the unraid system, but where is it?

[trurl]

9 hours ago, gary.e.mckee said:

/dev/sda /dev/sdb

Your user shares are in /mnt/user. The individual disks are at /mnt/disk1, /mnt/disk2, ..., /mnt/cache. As mentioned

12 hours ago, trurl said:

It is extremely important that you not mix user shares and disks when moving or copying files. Linux doesn't know that user shares are just another view of the disks and so it could try to overwrite what it is trying to read if the paths work out that way.

 

9 hours ago, gary.e.mckee said:

/dev/sda /dev/sdb

Even when working at the device level you don't want to use those for disks in the array or you will invalidate parity. The proper device designations are /dev/md1 for disk1 and so on. And for your case you don't want to work with the devices anyway, you want to work with the mounts.

 

9 hours ago, gary.e.mckee said:

Midnight Commander, but I can't find it.

mc at the command line