Ideally, id like to see one big old drive, like a traditional RAID, and just let unRaid handle where the data actually is. Is this something that is possible or will I have to see the individual drives?

Ideally, id like to see one big old drive, like a traditional RAID, and just let unRaid handle where the data actually is. Is this something that is possible or will I have to see the individual drives?

It is possible with User Shares.  Just create one share called "Media" (or whatever you like), set the split level high (30 should work) and go from there.  You can then chose to not should the disk shares.

Great. How does unRaid handle this? When I transfer data to this one big share, where will unraid put it? It really doesnt matter im just curious.

 

Thanks!

Great. How does unRaid handle this? When I transfer data to this one big share, where will unraid put it? It really doesnt matter im just curious.

 

Thanks!

Assuming you set the split level fairly high, it will put it wherever it likes.  Most of us create separate shares for Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc and set the split level and what not that way.  It gives you a little more control over where data goes.  Some goes as far as using User Shares only for reading data and then using the disk shares to write data.

I feel like there is the potential for wasted space that way. If i have two 250 gb drives, one for music and one for movies, and I have 200gb of movies, and only 20gb of music, i'd like to be able to utilize some of the free 230gb on the music drive for movies.

 

If I have an 8TB share and create a few folders (movies, tv, music) and I organize it as such, I really dont care where its stored as long as its organized and easy access, and no wasted space. Am I understanding this correctly? This is how it works on my current RAID5.

 

Thanks.

I feel like there is the potential for wasted space that way. If i have two 250 gb drives, one for music and one for movies, and I have 200gb of movies, and only 20gb of music, i'd like to be able to utilize some of the free 230gb on the music drive for movies.

There is nothing to stop you from doing that.  Some, myself incldued, are anal about where the data we store actually is.  I like to know what disks have what content on them as it makes it easier to recover in case of a failure.

 

If I have an 8TB share and create a few folders (movies, tv, music) and I organize it as such, I really dont care where its stored as long as its organized and easy access, and no wasted space. Am I understanding this correctly? This is how it works on my current RAID5.

It can work this way, with one small exception.  If you are trying to right a 30GB bluray to the server and there is not enough space on any single drive the right will fail. 

 

Example: You have 3 disks

disk1 -> 10GB free

disk2 -> 15GB free

disk3 -> 10GB free

Those add up to 35GB but because there is no one disk with 30GB free the write of the 30GB bluray will fail.

I feel like there is the potential for wasted space that way. If i have two 250 gb drives, one for music and one for movies, and I have 200gb of movies, and only 20gb of music, i'd like to be able to utilize some of the free 230gb on the music drive for movies.

 

What wasted space? There's nothing stopping you from using the same disk for both movies and music.

 

You have to remember, RAID5 gives you one big logical disk. unRAID is an array of individual disks with the contents combined to show up as a single network location. They are different.

 

I would suggest you organize your storage so there is a certain storage structure on your disks. It takes very little effort and has advantages you can leverage in the future. Read the Wiki and look at user shares section in the unofficial manual.

 

Peter

 

I feel like there is the potential for wasted space that way. If i have two 250 gb drives, one for music and one for movies, and I have 200gb of movies, and only 20gb of music, i'd like to be able to utilize some of the free 230gb on the music drive for movies.

 

If I have an 8TB share and create a few folders (movies, tv, music) and I organize it as such, I really dont care where its stored as long as its organized and easy access, and no wasted space.

 

When you create a user share you decide how you want it arranged on the disks in your array.  If you create the music share and tell it to only include disk1, then all the files in the music share will be on disk1.  If you then create a movies share and tell it to include disk1 and disk2, it will span those two disks and have the combined available space from the two disks. No wasted space.

 

if you have 4 2TB data disks and set up all your shares to span all data disks, then all shares will span the disks and share the available space across all disks.

 

Greg

I feel like there is the potential for wasted space that way. If i have two 250 gb drives, one for music and one for movies, and I have 200gb of movies, and only 20gb of music, i'd like to be able to utilize some of the free 230gb on the music drive for movies.

 

If I have an 8TB share and create a few folders (movies, tv, music) and I organize it as such, I really dont care where its stored as long as its organized and easy access, and no wasted space.

 

When you create a user share you decide how you want it arranged on the disks in your array.  If you create the music share and tell it to only include disk1, then all the files in the music share will be on disk1.  If you then create a movies share and tell it to include disk1 and disk2, it will span those two disks and have the combined available space from the two disks. No wasted space.

 

if you have 4 2TB data disks and set up all your shares to span all data disks, then all shares will span the disks and share the available space across all disks.

 

Greg

 

Greg thanks for your help. I think this is what i am looking for. I will read up on this before I do it as lionelhutz indicated there may be benefits to organizing it a little differently but this is what im looking for.

 

Thanks everyone for your input.