Over the course of 2 weeks played with Unraid, precleared 2X2TB hard drives (2 cycles with no errors) and I am now ready to start adding data to disks.

 

But before I do something stupid in the beginning that I should have put some thought into, I figure I should ask the experts. I think I understand the different "split levels" but only in VERY BASIC high level understanding, not the nitty gritty details.

 

What I want:

 

Baby on the way (WOO HOO!) so want to think about “Kids movies” but not sure if you do that in Unraid or XBMC, or both?

 

TV shows all together (ex. All of Seinfeld together, all of Big bang theory together, etc…not separate just by seasons, but full shows) Is this even a good idea? What are some of the loopholes?

 

Have DVD movies and Blu-ray separate. Pros vs Cons to this layout?

 

Pictures separate. Probably a good idea? Yes? No?

 

Games separate. Probably a good idea? Yes? No?

 

 

I have this to organize:

DVD movies (all movies are in separate folders)

Blu-Ray movies (all movies are in separate folders)

TV shows (a dozen or so that are laid out ....Media->TV shows->Seinfeld->Season 5->"all episodes go here")

Music (Media->Music->Artist->Album)

Pictures (use picasa 3.whatever where pics are stored in folders and somehow picasa arranges them by date)

games (not even close to experimenting with this yet, but like everything else I have learned...it will eventually happen so want to at least think about this now)

 

I am right at the beginning where I only have 10 songs, 4 pictures, 7 movies, and 2 TV shows converted and tested in XBMC. I wanted to do it this way incase I needed to change the folder layout. Much easier to change only a few of my test cases early on instead of converting everything only to find out I should have laid out the folder structure a different way.

 

 

Using Win 7 x64 bit with XBMC on top and Unraid box

 

What do you use to view?  Reason I ask is the directory structure I use is this:

 

Share name:  Media

Directories under Media:

Movies:

  No directories under movies just files, but I can see something like Blu-Ray, etc. as you pointed out

TVShows

  Directories under TVShows:

    Seinfeld

      S1

        "First Episode"

        "Second Episode"

        etc.

    BigBangTheory

      S1

        "First Ep"

        etc.

 

 

Now, I have an apple tv that i got for Christmas, so because of that, the directory structure really doesn't matter to me, i just set it up this way so I could easily find what I am looking for.

I use a share for each type of data, the shares would be Movies, TV Shows, Pictures, Music, Storage etc.

 

 

Now I have not used xbmc for several years, but as i recall, for videos, I would have one directory for browsing, so I would have all my videos (tv shows and movies) in there.  If I just use a media share, i could browse for what i wanted under that one directory (tv shows, movies).

 

Pics i would have a separate share, same with music.

 

But lionel's setup sounds good too.  I just sometimes prefer to have less shares where possible, although I guess it doesn't really matter.

If you haven't yet done so, read the unofficial manual in the Wiki for some ideas. The all-in-one share works but it can have split level limitations.

With XBMC these days, you just stick everything into the library anyway - so go down the multiple share path.  My structure has TV shows at split level 2 (split at seasons) and everything else at split level 1 (music, movies, backup, apps, ebooks etc etc)

 

It works well for my needs, but as recommended, definitely check out the unofficial manual, specifically here:

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#Split_level

I use a share for each type of data, the shares would be Movies, TV Shows, Pictures, Music, Storage etc.

 

 

 

I personally do exactly this. The reason I do this is simple. When you out grow a drive because it fills with movies or whatever you simply add a new drive and add it to your shares. XBMC sees it as one drive and simply loads it up. I've got the following setup at my house.

 

Disk1 Movies

Disk2 TV

Disk3 Movies

Disk4 Music/Photos

Disk5 MISC basically network stuff.

 

On my XBMC it sees 1 move share, 1 music share, 1 tv share

 

My Movie are sorted like so.

Disk1/Movies

Disk3/Movies

Each movie has its own folder with all of its content in each folder

 

My TV are sorted like so

Disk2/TV

//BattleStar Galactica

///Season 1

////Battlestar Galactica-S01E01.avi

 

My Music is like so

Disk4/Music

//ACDC

///Back in Black

////01-Trackname.mp3

 

My pictures are like so

Disk4/Photos

//2003

20003-07-10 12.14.06.jpg

 

I'm rather orginized because My OCD tells me I have to be that way.

 

I use "Ember" to grab all my images and plots for XMBC, Media Info Plus for all my TV shows, I use "MP3Tagger" to label all my tunes and I use "A better finder rename" to rename all my photos with the EXIF date.

If you are using XBMC, and plan on using library mode (with meta data scraping etc), then honestly it doesn't really matter how you physically organize to XBMC.  XBMC uses 1 database and uses meta data to sort...

 

If you are using videos and not library mode, then yes organization will be focused on physical file/folder organization.

 

Personally I run with only 1 user share setup for my whole unraid array, I set split level 2.

 

I then follow the following folder structures...

 

USERSHARE\Movies\TITLE\movie_file (plus supporting files like fanart.jpg, metadata nfo etc)

USERSHARE\TVSeries\Show\Season\episode_files (plus supporting files like fanart.jpg, metadata nfo etc)

USERSHARE\Apps\TITLE\app_installers_files (plus docs config files etc)

USERSHARE\Pics\Folders or Files

USERSHARE\GF_data\all_her_crap

 

 

My setup will essentially do what you want, all contents of "USERSHARE\Movies\TITLE" folders will stay together on the same disk, but USERSHARE\Movies\TITLE folders themselves will be spread across all drives.  This setup will keep your TV episodes and season together on the same disk... but if you add another new show, that one may be on another disk (along with all the episodes/seasons).

 

For the other random files. like apps, pics, personal files and even music etc... they are generally so small, I don't really care much how they are split or where.  Though I do sort music like USERSHARE\MUSIC\ARTIST\ALBUM\files, so all ARTIST and below stay on the same disk.  Never much of a problem because mp3 are so small.

 

What are some of the problems with this type of setup?  Well lets say you happen to like soap operas (example just cause 1 show has tons of episodes/seasons)...  You may hit a point where 1 show will fill up a whole drive, the next time you try to add another episode/season you would run into space errors even if all your other drives are practically empty.  Though usually even in BR whole shows will not break you with drive sizes these days and if you do run into problems, you probably should have upgraded your storage space anyways.  This also doesn't usually happen if you use free space mode.  I usually will get a whole season or 2 of a show, I will rip them all at once, which will place the show on the disk with the most free space...  Then when I rip say just a movie, generally the disk with the large show will not be used for some time as the other disks try to catch up in used space.

 

 

As for general organization goes... as mentioned really depends on the tool you are using and how specific you want to be.  XBMC in library mode can filter HD from non-HD (same with genre, ratings etc), so no real need for separate folders but if you use video/file mode then yes it would be needed.