I have been using User Shares for some time without issue.  Several months ago I changed how I had set up my shares and subfolders.  The user share I am writing this thread about is my largest titled "Media"

 

I have a 10 disk array (one of them being parity) so 9 data drives.  Media is housed on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.  Disk 6 does not contain any "Media" share, and there are shares other than "Media" on 3 of the drives listed above.  I'm not sure that is pertinent to this question but thought I would mention it.

 

Disk 1 has Media/TV Shows

Disks 2, 3, 4, 5 have Media/Movies/{Genre}

Disk 7 has Media/Music Concerts

Disk 8 has Media/Music

Disk 9 has Media/Jukebox

 

My "Media" user share is set to "Most Free" with a split level of 2.  I have included "disk1, disk2, disk3, disk4, disk5, disk7, disk8, disk9" and excluded disk 6.

 

I have "Media" mapped as a network drive on my Win 7 machine.  The idea is when I go to copy over a movie and go any of the genre sub-folders under Movies, it should pick whichever drive out of 2, 3, 4, & 5 has the least space and save it there, even creating the correct genre subfolder if needed (genre being the 3rd level folder).  However, if I go to any of the other folders under media (for example "Music") it will stay with the designated drive each of those is a 2nd level folder and their names don't exist on any other drive. 

 

This strategy worked under this configuration fine for a while without issue.  Then sometime in the past month or two it stopped properly looking for the least filled Movie drive to save on.  It has been sticking with one particular drive or another, but they were jumping ahead in used space.  First it was sticking with Drive 5 for a while and now it has shifted to 2.  I was testing it tonight and even when the genre folder I was writing too was already existing on the drive with the least space (of those 4 drives).  In the test I wrote a file to the path Media/Movies/Children's which existed on drives 2 and 4.  However even though drive 2 was 65% full and drive 4 was 61% full, it still wrote to drive 2.  Unfortunately I don't know exactly when it started behaving this way as it took some time for me to really notice.  I only add movies 2 or 3 times a month.  The only recent changes to the system are replacing drives 4 & 6 and adding drive 9.  I did play around with the split level when I added drive 9 to get it to do what I wanted it too.  (IE keep the contents of drive 9 on drive 9 and not letting to go anywhere else.  Drive 9 is a 32GB SSD that needs to sit under the Media share for a very specific file set.  However my above description accurately lists my current configuration.  However, unless I'm misreading about user shares, this should work.  I am not getting any cross mingling of files in the 2nd level folder, but also dont appear to be getting the crossover for the 3rd level folders I am expecting, which really only applies to the movie 2nd level folder.

 

I am on unRAID 4.7 right now (decided to wait for the final 5 since there is a lot of activity lately).  My hardware list in my signature is accurate.

Syslog is attached in case it's useful.

syslog-2012-05-20.txt

Media/Movies/Children should only appear on a single disk with split level 2.

Media/Movies/Children should only appear on a single disk with split level 2.

 

Sorry was out of town so haven't been able to look into this all week.

 

What I'm trying to do for a main user share called "Media"

 

Media\Jukebox to stay on one disk

 

Media\Movies\Childrens to populate to multiple disks that ONLY have Media\Movies already in them

 

I don't want unRAID to ever create the 2nd folder level on a disk that I haven't already set it up (IE Movies, Jukebox or Music etc..).  However, where Movies is created on multiple disks, but not all discs in the user share, it will populate 3rd level folders (IE below Movies) across multiple disks.

 

Should I have a split level of 3 instead of 2?  Or will this not work at all?

Well, I tried a split level 3. 

 

It actually created Movies/Childrens on disk 1 inside the Media Share.  Disk 1 is in the Media share, but previously did not have a "movies" folder in it. 

Why would going from a split level 2 to a split level 3 cause this?  At 2 it was not creating "movies" anywhere else.  3 should be more restrictive correct, not less?

 

What am I missing here?

 

Thanks.

Media can only be assigned a single split level. Level 2 will allow /Media/A to split and 3 will allow Media/A/B to split. Level 3 is less restrictive than level 2. There is a way to make /Media/Music to have split level 2 and /Media/Movie/{genre} to have split level 3 but you will have to add a split level tag at the correct directory level. See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3509.msg30684#msg30684