Details of system:

Unraid 6.9.2

4 discs in array (+ parity)

Set up in disc share mode with multiple folders in almost every drive that are easily accessible by my desktop computer.

 

The problem:

I have a movie folder on 2 drives and I want this to be accessible from my media management software as a single folder (currently Plex).  What I see in the client is two titles for Movies.  I would like them to be all in one section.

 

I thought I could just add a media location in the setup template where the two drives would have the same name and then they would be combined, but this doesn't work (or I am doing it wrong).

 

What is the simplest way to make this possible?  (Currently, they are named Movies and Movies2, but I could change them both to be the same name if needed.)

 

I thought about turning on user shares, but since I copy directly to folders (normally) when I add data I didn't want everything to get messed up.

 

Thanks,

Brian

User shares is the normal way to use Unraid, and the solution to having folders span disks, so they can be accessed under a common name.

 

I always recommend not sharing disks and only using user shares.  You can still control which disks are used for each user share in the settings for each user share.

Is it okay to use both, then?  I still want to transfer files directly to a disk share folder from the desktop and the other parts of the system are working fine...TV shows, music, etc.

 

Then just turn on user share for Movies and link those two folders, so it shows up as one?  Or am I misunderstanding?

 

B.

11 minutes ago, BrianB said:

Then just turn on user share for Movies and link those two folders, so it shows up as one?  Or am I misunderstanding

If you turn on User Shares then all top level folders of the same name on any array or pool drive are automatically treated as a User Share with the name of the folder and the share covers all drives containing that folder.   Note that this is just another view of your files - nothing is actually changed under the covers.

11 hours ago, BrianB said:

Is it okay to use both, then?

Do not attempt to work with user shares and disks together when moving or copying files.

  

On 2/20/2019 at 10:06 AM, trurl said:

• If you mix user shares and disks when moving/copying files, you can actually lose data, because Linux doesn't realize that the source path and the destination path might actually be the same file, and so tries to overwrite what it is trying to read. This is often referred to as the User Share Copy Bug.
• The Linux command for Move and Rename are the same, mv. So when you try to move files from one user share to another, Linux will often simply rename the files so they have a different path on the same disk, in violation of any user share settings such as included disks. The workaround for this is to copy from source to destination, so that new files get created following the user share settings, then deleting from the source.

 

 

Right.  So, first change the name of the two folders to "Movies," and then turn on user shares.  Since I'm only using them for playback through Plex I can continue to use disk shares for copying, moving, deleting, etc. without any issues, correct?

 

Also, do I need to change any settings in user shares since I won't be writing to them?

 

B.

All user share settings only affect writing new files to a user share, and how files are handled with caching.