TRaSH Guides and Spinning dics

[Rweng009]

I am relatively new to unraid.

I am familiar with the TRaSH Guides recommended structure for a media server.

Within that structure I understand a degree of disk management and granularity can be achieved by manually placing the subfolders on the discs of preference. This was a concern of mine and still work in progress.

 

However, as we have one share being ‘data’ across all media discs does this mean that all discs under this Share are spun up when the Share is being used or have I got my understanding of this wrong.

This is not what I want. If subfolder (not share) tv is being used I don’t need or want the movies disc spinning.

Clarity anyone?

[trurl]

This is not the way you should do this on Unraid. Create separate shares for separate uses so you can manage them separately. 

 

If you want to access a single share on the network that includes them all, rootshare is a feature of Unassigned Devices plugin. 

[jmztaylor]

2 hours ago, Rweng009 said:

However, as we have one share being ‘data’ across all media discs does this mean that all discs under this Share are spun up when the Share is being used or have I got my understanding of this wrong.

This is not what I want. If subfolder (not share) tv is being used I don’t need or want the movies disc spinning.

Clarity anyone?

 

Personally, I have a share called media.  Every *arr docker has /mnt/user/media mapped to /media inside the container.  My share media is on all disks but Unraid by default spreads this across all disks evenly.  So its possible that 1 episode is on disk 1 and the next episode is on disk 2.  But it doesn't separate a single file across multiple disks.  If you want say tv on a single disk and movies on another, you will have to create those shares separately and in the share settings specify which disk you want them on.  If you have parity disk then its possible all disks will be spun up anyways if turbo write is enabled. 

 

Using a cache pool pretty much negates the path mappings part of the trash guides also. 

[trurl]

7 hours ago, trurl said:

If you want to access a single share on the network that includes them all, rootshare is a feature of Unassigned Devices plugin.

And if you want something (docker) on Unraid to access all shares with a single path, all the user shares are at /mnt/user

[Rweng009]

Perhaps you are misunderstanding my question.

If a share is called or is in use such as a broadly encompassing 'Media' (or whatever) will all the discs (say 10) with a Media share on it spin up and run while that share is in use.

Thats all.

 

[trurl]

9 hours ago, jmztaylor said:

it doesn't separate a single file across multiple disks.

When reading a file, only the disk containing the file needs to spin. When writing, only the disk being written and parity need to spin, unless using turbo write.

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Performance

 

[ConnerVT]

2 hours ago, Rweng009 said:

Perhaps you are misunderstanding my question.

If a share is called or is in use such as a broadly encompassing 'Media' (or whatever) will all the discs (say 10) with a Media share on it spin up and run while that share is in use.

 

I think I understand what you are asking.  I had a similar want, and this is how I configured my server.

 

I have 5 data disks + 1 parity in my array.  My server is used for media (Plex), multiple computer backup, a large photo depository, and Nextcloud. I wished for my media share to always be spun up, as the delay to spin up the drives was annoying.  I wanted the rest of the drives to stay spun down unless needed, which is infrequent. 

 

My media library currently fits on 2 of my data drives.  I have a share /Media, and configured the Share Settings to exclude all but the 2 drives which have my media files.  (I manually moved all of the files that were on the other drives to these 2 drives).  I set these two drives to never spin down, the others for a 15 minute spin down delay.

 

Now, when Plex does any maintenance, it only accesses the 2 drives that have media files (which are always spinning).  The 3 other drives remain spun down.

[Rweng009]

Thank you all for the effort of  responding. I have a much clearer understanding now.

[jmztaylor]

14 hours ago, trurl said:

When reading a file, only the disk containing the file needs to spin. When writing, only the disk being written and parity need to spin, unless using turbo write.

https://wiki.unraid.net/Manual/Storage_Management#Performance

 

 

Yeah I understand that.  I was simply mentioning that Unraid doesn't "stripe" files across disks.

[trurl]

1 hour ago, jmztaylor said:

Yeah I understand that.  I was simply mentioning that Unraid doesn't "stripe" files across disks.

I know you do. I only quoted it for the benefit of OP since it was relevant to the other points I was making.