tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Will unraid run in a RAID5-like fashion? IE three 40GB disks yield 80GB of usable space? I just set up my first system and configured a user share... \\machine\disk1\test I added disk1 and disk2 to the share. When I mapped the drive under Windows, it showed 80GB free. I coped over 50GB of test data and the copy failed when disk1 became full. Now I check the mapped drive properties under Windows and it shows 40GB with 10MB free.... no sign of the space on disk2. How do I crate one huge storage pool that includes all of the available disks (minus parity)? Link to comment
johnm160 Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Check your split level, it controls how data is spread across disks. http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#Split_level Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 Thanks. I've changed the split level to every number between 0 and 10 and nothing works. Do I have to stop and restart the array after each change? I triple-checked my disk and share setup and the included disks is listed as "disk1,disk2." When I click calculate size in the UI, it shows 40GB. Windows is still reporting 40GB with 10MB free. And my copies are still failing due to drive full issues. The second 40GB disk in the array isn't being used at all... The only way I can get it to take data is to create a share point on it, and export it. And that defeats the whole purpose of me building this system. Link to comment
BetaQuasi Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 What are you defining your high water levels at? Remember it's in kilobytes, for example.. 1Gb = 1000000, or 40Gb = 40000000 Don't panic, there is obviously a configuration issue. Perhaps post some screenshots of your user share setups. Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Are you writing to the User Share? Just want to make sure! You should be writing to a \\machine\test and so long as your settings are correct and the file you are trying to write is not over 40GB you should be OK. Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 Thanks guys. Yes, I am writing to \\machine\test And if you mean my minimum free settings... Well I had left that at default (zero) but have since set it to 4GB. I'll make some screen shots. Link to comment
spidi Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 stupid question, but whats your test data? do you copy lots of small files or one big with 50 GB. because unRAID doens't work like RAID5, there you have 80GB but with unRAID you have 2 x 40 GB of protected data Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 How big are the files you are trying to copy? If you haven't set the minimum free space LARGER than the file the file you are attempting to copy, the copy will fail if the free space on the disk that unRAID attempts to copy to is smaller than the file size. (unRAID will not split a file across two disks and there is no way that it 'knows' the file size when the copy begins, so there is no way to determine of a copy will fail before it begins!) With your settings if a file is larger than 4GB, it can well fail if the disk space is at your preset minimum free space. (I point this out since many DVD iso's are larger than 4GB and many of us are using unRAID for video storage.) I believe the recommendation is the minimum free space should be set at twice the maximum excepted file space. Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 Lots of small files. Real world data (the "My documents" folders from about a dozen different PCs over the years) Everything from 1k text files to 5gb DVD rips and VMware files. Assuming the minimum file size was my problem, how do I correct and force unraid to use the second disk, considering there is less than 10MB free on disk1? Thanks to all! Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 That's it? Wow. That's simple. What should me split level be set at? I don't care about keeping certain folders on certain drives... I simply want a huge storage base where I can dump whatever onto, and let unraid manage where to put it. Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 Assuming this works, let me ask a quick question for once this goes into production... I have a few 40-100GB VMware files and some disk images of similar size. Assuming I don't want to set a "min free" of 100GB (which seems like it would be a waste), is there a way to automatically let unraid decide where to put it? Like most-free or fill-up instead of highwater? Link to comment
tucansam Posted May 15, 2012 Author Share Posted May 15, 2012 It worked, and I owe you all a cup of coffee (or a beer). I think I am going to spend a few days nuking and rebuilding this array using various configs and test data to establish an ideal config for the final system. Then I will start simulating drive failures and upgrades and see how it fares. I literally have 28 years worth of files that need a truly secure storage method, vs the huge cardboard box full of 20mb-2tb disks that I have now. Final stage will be to build a duplicate server and set up rsync. Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Assuming this works, let me ask a quick question for once this goes into production... I have a few 40-100GB VMware files and some disk images of similar size. Assuming I don't want to set a "min free" of 100GB (which seems like it would be a waste), is there a way to automatically let unraid decide where to put it? Like most-free or fill-up instead of highwater? Very good question!!! And I don't have a real good answer to it --- Both for you and me! 100GB is a big chuck of space on even a 3TB drive! I assume that you don't have a large number of disk image files that you wish to store on unRAID. What I would do to copy them manually to a specific disk using a disk share rather then to an user share. I would verify that the disk share had enough room prior to making the copy. I would set the minimum free space based on the largest file size that I routinely expected to copy as a part of a large transfer of files. Having said that, I am wondering what people are doing who are storing copies of Bluray disks are doing. A bluray disk could be as large as 50GB. Are you setting the minimum free space at 50GB, 60GB, 100GB of some other number? Link to comment
mbryanr Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Having said that, I am wondering what people are doing who are storing copies of Bluray disks are doing. A bluray disk could be as large as 50GB. Are you setting the minimum free space at 50GB, 60GB, 100GB of some other number? IIRC, my user share is set at 60GB. I copy files over disk shares after that.. Link to comment
Joe L. Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 Split level of 0 indicates YOU will create directories on the physical disks as you desire. unRAID will not create directories for you. You probably want at least level 1 or 2. Link to comment
opentoe Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 Thanks. I've changed the split level to every number between 0 and 10 and nothing works. Do I have to stop and restart the array after each change? I triple-checked my disk and share setup and the included disks is listed as "disk1,disk2." When I click calculate size in the UI, it shows 40GB. Windows is still reporting 40GB with 10MB free. And my copies are still failing due to drive full issues. The second 40GB disk in the array isn't being used at all... The only way I can get it to take data is to create a share point on it, and export it. And that defeats the whole purpose of me building this system. My split level is 999. I have 13 drives and all I wanted was data to be even copied to them all via a user share. I don't use disk shares. And my min free space is 52428800. Since I some times copy very large files (like a complete blu ray) I "think" that is why I have min free space so high. When I come down to filling up my drives hopefully all will be good. Link to comment
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