Copying 3TB of data to a share (14TB array) says "not enough space" after less than 500GB copied

[UNPAID]

Long story short, I wanted to copy a folder that was just over 3TB to my Unraid server and I used robocopy to copy it over. I watched it for a little bit and left it to copy as it was all going fine. But when I returned some time later, I found that it only copied just under 500GB.

Trying to copy anything else to that share now showed that there was "not enough space".

I have an array of 3 usable disks with around 14TB of free space and a 500GB cache SSD.

So it seems the cache got filled up possible? But why does it not write directly to the array instead?

Should I just disable the cache drive completely if moving such large files at once?

The mover is now active and moving all these partial files over to the array but all those files will have to be copied over again...

My shares are setup as per some videos I saw. I did some copying in the past and it was okay but it wasn't so much data at once.

[itimpi]

Have you set Minimum Free Space for the cache pool or for the User Share in question?

 

You should post your system's diagnostics zip file in your next post in this thread to get more informed feedback.  It is always a good idea to post this if your question might involve us seeing how you have things set up or to look at recent logs.

 

 

[trurl]

If you need to transfer more than cache can hold, don't cache. Mover is intended for idle time. It is impossible to move from fast cache to slow array as fast as you can write to cache.

[UNPAID]

I finally got around to trying this again.

Thought I'd try writing direct to the array but after a short time it was obvious it would take forever.

So I upped my cache to 5TB SSD (raid 0) and also threw in an extra 10TB HDD while I was at it, and was able to copy everything I needed over to the cache.

I ran mover to get all this data off the cache to the array as I have another 3TB+ to copy but after some time the mover stopped and some of the data would not come off the cache, even though this share is set up to use All disks...so I manually selected all 4 disks to be used and still the mover won't move.

It looks like my Disk 1 is absolutely full and none of the other disks are being used at all.

Settings attached.

 

[itimpi]

You are likely to get better informed feedback if you attach your system’s diagnostics zip file to your next post in this thread. It is always a good idea when asking questions to supply your diagnostics so we can see details of your system, how you have things configured, and the current syslog.

[trurl]

39 minutes ago, UNPAID said:

Disk 1 is absolutely full and none of the other disks are being used at all

Probably because of your split level setting

[Frank1940]

Try changing this to this:

 

As pick a value of "Minimum free space:" that is about 25% larger than the biggest file you will ever copy to that share.  (Your current setting of 458GB is probably about 8X larger than it need be.)

[UNPAID]

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

Try changing this to this:

 

As pick a value of "Minimum free space:" that is about 25% larger than the biggest file you will ever copy to that share.  (Your current setting of 458GB is probably about 8X larger than it need be.)

Thank you! It's moving off the cache on to another disk now.🙏

I set the levels up as per a video when I was fist setting up (I don't really understand what they all mean tbh) but that's what was suggested...

 

So is it okay just to use that split level for all shares and does it matter if the data is scattered around various disks?

I assume you can at any point move all the data of a share onto a single bigger disk.

 

As for the minimum free space, I tried setting it to 0 as some of my other shares (grayed out 0) but it keeps spitting out 458GB anyway.

Does it really matter what it's set to? I just want it to not interfere with copying data over.

[Frank1940]

1 minute ago, UNPAID said:

So is it okay just to use that split level for all shares and does it matter if the data is scattered around various disks?

I do not consider it to be a problem if you use 'High Water' or 'Fill Up'. Both of those fill large chunks of the selected HD before it moves on to use the next disk.   It can (eventually) result in spinning up several disks to generate a directory type operation.  (You also want do not want to have thousands of files in a single directory as that can also really slow the generation/display of the file structure in the format that you want.)  Now the OCD factor is another matter...

 

6 minutes ago, UNPAID said:

I assume you can at any point move all the data of a share onto a single bigger disk.

Yes.  HOWEVER, you must do a disk-to-disk type of operation.   (Share-to-share operations are also fine.)   Share-to-disk (or disk-to-share) operations can result in data loss when you eventually copy a file onto itself.  (It has happened and the resultant file is truncated to zero length!)  

[trurl]

I don't bother with split level. Default High-water Allocation will usually result in files that are written together going to the same disk anyway, and if they do get split, the only penalty is a delay for another disk to spin up when accessing the files.

 

Minimum Free should be set larger than the largest file you expect to write to the share. If you set it to zero, it will calculate a value that probably isn't what you need. That is to prevent you from overfilling a disk, but can also result in not allowing the disk to be written anymore when it still has enough space.

 

If a disk has less than Minimum Free, Unraid will choose another when it begins to write a file. But Split Level has precedence, so if that says a file belongs with other files, that is where it will try to put them even if it doesn't have Minimum Free.

[UNPAID]

Finally got all the data off the cache drive but for one file...it's still listed as being on the cache drive but going into the share, it's listed as being on the cache drive and disk 1.

Surely it can't be on both disks at once? Mover refuses to move it regardless.

[itimpi]

2 minutes ago, UNPAID said:

Surely it can't be on both disks at once? Mover refuses to move it regardless.

It can.   Mover will never overwrite an existing file which explains why it will not move.   You need to manually decide which copy to keep and delete the other one.

[johntk22]

You have to disable the cache drive temporary to make sure that the files are written directly to array. This will force the unraid to write directly to the array, bypass the cache.

[Frank1940]

38 minutes ago, itimpi said:

You need to manually decide which copy to keep and delete the other one.

OR rename one if you want to keep both...

[UNPAID]

11 hours ago, itimpi said:

It can.   Mover will never overwrite an existing file which explains why it will not move.   You need to manually decide which copy to keep and delete the other one.

So can this be because I tried writing directly to the array before? It copied more than just one file before I cancelled it so it's stage it's just the one file.

How would I manually delete it off the cache?

[itimpi]

12 minutes ago, UNPAID said:

How would I manually delete it off the cache?

Easiest way would be to use the Dynamix File Manager plugin.

[Frank1940]

44 minutes ago, UNPAID said:

It copied more than just one file before I cancelled it so it's stage it's just the one file.

How would I manually delete it off the cache?

 

Be careful at this point which file you delete.  Make sure that the file on the array is there in total as cancelling a copy might result in a truncated file...

[UNPAID]

Just wanted to say I fixed the duplicate issue by simply deleting that file off the share (using explorer) and then copying it over again and running mover. This time it went straight on to one of the disks.