13 minutes ago, trurl said:

yes

All assigned drives are combined (what you are thinking of as pooled). Large HDDs in the array, and fast storage in pools outside the array.

Folders can span drives. The combined top level folders on all assigned disks constitute the user shares. It is these user shares that are accessed across the network. Your diagnostics showed that you had already created some user shares.

When you create a user share in the webUI, top level folders named for the share are created on array and pools as needed in accordance with settings for that share.

Conversely, if you create a top level folder on assigned drives, it is automatically part of a user share named for the folder. Any user share you have not made settings for get default settings.

Each user share has settings that control how it uses storage, and controls network access to the share.

Hmm, well this is is getting a lot different then. Yes I created one user so far for me because I thought there would be no way to access the unraid nas from the Windows SERVER so I could copy the data over. Was that not correct?

Just now, SkOrPn said:

I created one user so far

Probably more than one.

Post a screenshot of Shares - User Shares

13 minutes ago, trurl said:

Probably more than one.

Post a screenshot of Shares - User Shares

16 minutes ago, trurl said:

Probably more than one.

Post a screenshot of Shares - User Shares

Here it is

As you can see, you have 6 user shares. Some of those have obvious names. But probably you don't want an appdata share yet since you don't have fast storage for it to live on. Not obvious what your intentions are for the PlexDocker share. Possibly that should just be a plex folder in the appdata share, when you are ready for that.

Might I suggest that you begin to forget all of the old terminology that you used with your Windows setup rather than trying to apply it to an Unraid server setup. Next, read these two sections of the manual to begin to understand Unraid's terminology:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/shares/

and

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/array/overview/

You should read these sections not with the intent that you will be an expert and have a crystal clear of how to set up your Unraid server but with the intent of gaining an understanding of how things work.

One more thing to realize is the cache pools are a very, very recent addition to Unraid. It is possible to use a cache pool to perform the same function as the array. (I know this is very confusing to the beginner but it is now a fact of life...) BUT you do lose a lot of flexibility if you choose the cache pool rather than the array. So be certain you know why you are going to use a cache pool for long term storage rather than the array before you do it!!!

Edited December 10, 2025Dec 10 by Frank1940

32 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

Hmm, well this is is getting a lot different then. Yes I created one user so far for me because I thought there would be no way to access the unraid nas from the Windows SERVER so I could copy the data over. Was that not correct?

Doesn’t Windows Server have access to the SMB network? SMB will likely be much slower than a direct USB or SATA connection but it is an option. You just need to configure SMB sharing in the user share settings for the share you want to transfer the files to.

Using the Unassigned Devices plugin you can also mount a Windows Server share in Unraid to transfer the files.

Edited December 10, 2025Dec 10 by wgstarks

16 minutes ago, trurl said:

As you can see, you have 6 user shares. Some of those have obvious names. But probably you don't want an appdata share yet since you don't have fast storage for it to live on. Not obvious what your intentions are for the PlexDocker share. Possibly that should just be a plex folder in the appdata share, when you are ready for that.

Yeah I dont know what my intensions are for the docker thing either, I just know how to follow along with the instructions I have been given, lol, and I was told to do that in a guide earlier. I thought you meant users, like people users, and I have only one named rod which is me. The PlexDocker share, the appdata share media etc were all created by me following a guide I was reading or watching. Not knowing Unraid all I can do is follow instructions, so everything you see that I have done is by following someone else's instructions. I have posted exactly what my intentions for this NAS are up above. I need parity protected storage, I am the admin of these computers, and I have a plex media server to get up and running off of it as well. I dont know how to do any of that without following someone else's instructions to do so, and this includes videos and documentation.

So my only intention is to get an Unraid-SERVER up and running with storage for files and plex media. That's all... Oh and I will be gutting the Windows server for its hardware as well, it has a I7-4790 and some enthusiast class RAM that I want to use too, plus that 1TB Samsung 870 EVO+ I have been talking about is the Windows SERVER OS drive, lol. All of that has to migrate to this Unraid server AFTER the data has been moved.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank You very much!

1 hour ago, SkOrPn said:

Yes, originally I was following the instructions of ChatGPT and it had me to setup docker and download plex. I also was watching a few videos on the subject and the same instructions were given. I did that, but I since have disabled docker after realizing that the first thing for me to do was to get the data on the Unraid-server as soon as possible. By the way, dont use AI for help with these things, it is so incredibly dumb and just doesn't listen to you, and in the end your time is just wasted, lol. Live and learn.

Check out Unraid Docs.

It’s a little dated since I don’t believe it has any info about zfs pools but it has a very good step-by-step for the initial Unraid setup along with terminology and descriptions.

1 hour ago, Frank1940 said:

Might I suggest that you begin to forget all of the old terminology that you used with your Windows setup rather than trying to apply it to an Unraid server setup. Next, read these two sections of the manual to begin to understand Unraid's terminology:

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/shares/

and

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/array/overview/

You should read these sections not with the intent that you will be an expert and have a crystal clear of how to set up your Unraid server but with the intent of gaining an understanding of how things work.

One more thing to realize is the cache pools are a very, very recent addition to Unraid. It is possible to use a cache pool to perform the same function as the array. (I know this is very confusing to the beginner but it is now a fact of life...) BUT you do lose a lot of flexibility if you choose the cache pool rather than the array. So be certain you know why you are going to use a cache pool for long term storage rather than the array before you do it!!!

Thank you very much for these documents. I will definitely read them, so thank you for that. Yeah my first computer build was in the summer of 1994 and I used windows 3.11 or something like that, even since I have built many hundreds of PC's for sandia national labs users and not once did they ever let me dabble officially in Linux. Linux has always been a side thing I did out of curiosity, but even though I always keep distros installed on my laptops and the few mini PC's I have I never really made it my main OS. So trying to ride a bike completely different is very hard to change your thinking. But again, I absolutely MUST step away from Microsoft for much of my hardware. Ditching Windows SERVER would be a big step for me. Maybe by the 2030's I might even be able to learn building my own server using Ubuntu SERVER, but I am a ways from ever doing that, lol. For now I want an appliance like storage device using my own retired hardware and I want that hardware based on Linux.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to this thread and helping me further.

Well I am back. It is nearly time for me to enable and format my 8TB HGST He8 drive and install the Parity drive which will be my least used 8TB HGST He8 HDD. That will be three 8TB HDD drives installed, one as Parity of course. I will leave only one 8TB HDD in my old server with all my data still on it (backup). And I also deleted the other shares "appdata" "media" and "PlexDocker" to start fresh, which I did not like seeing in the networked drive anyway. So what are my next steps? Setup the cache drive and then the Parity drive in that order? Then enable Docker and install PMS? Any advice on doing that properly?

I think I have the HGST HDD figured out already, BUT:

How exactly do I setup the cache drive?

How exactly should I setup the Parity drive?

When I come back this machine will also have a slightly better CPU and RAM to work with. I have been reading up on Unraid and I think I should be considering a better NVMe SSD as well, but that is for later. Thanks again to anyone who helps me over the finish line.

The Unraid Docs I linked in my last post describes this all in order step-by-step.

19 hours ago, SkOrPn said:

dabble officially in Linux

Unraid doesn't require you to work in Linux. The Unraid webUI isn't a Linux GUI, and you shouldn't even think about using the command line without advice.

54 minutes ago, wgstarks said:

The Unraid Docs I linked in my last post describes this all in order step-by-step.

I'm finally at the first Parity syncing stage, yay. Ten hours to go. I got the cache in the Pool Devices section formatted as btrfs too. Not sure that I can touch the machine while Parity is happening though. So I guess I will leave it to do its thing. Thanks again.

So tomorrow I will finally get to setup docker and pms. Any idea when UnRAID will start high water leveling the data across the two data Array drives?

Just let Parity do its thing.

The next thing I would do is to transfer that data from the drive on your Windows machine to the server. That should be the next step in your lessons in how you do things on your Unraid server. (Some folks don't have problems with using SMB and others have fits. It depends on how familiar you in setting up users and servers...) If you are having problems, I will point you to a couple of thread that can help. (MS/ Windows has become a very security conscience environment and it is best to go along with what MS requires--- and usually easier in the long run.)

44 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

Any idea when UnRAID will start high water leveling the data across the two data Array drives?

Once the high water mark is reached on the current drive it will be recalculated and the new high water mark will be used on the drive with the most free space.

You can see full descriptions of the various settings by clicking the question mark ?

Edited December 11, 2025Dec 11 by wgstarks
Typo

OK guys, thanks for the help.

OK, the Parity check has finished 0 errors and it took 13 hours. One thing I noticed is that the high water leveling never kicked in. The first 8TB data drive I installed is still full and the second 8TB drive never took any data and is still empty.

Now I have to figure out Docker and Plex and how to migrate all of the Plex metadata data. I dont want Plex starting from scratch. So the Windows Server is still running great even though it is now down to one 8TB drive, lol. Now I just got to figure out how to copy the Plex data over (not the media files, as that was copied over several days ago). I'm still reading UnRAID documents as much as I can.

53 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

One thing I noticed is that the high water leveling never kicked in. The first 8TB data drive I installed is still full and the second 8TB drive never took any data and is still empty.

What split level are you using?

1 minute ago, wgstarks said:

What split level are you using?

High Water I think is the one I will prefer. I want the data to be level on every data drive at all times. Is that High Water mode? Your previous reply above seems to suggest that I have to wait for the first drive to fill up even more before leveling will occur? I am still ready unraid documents and haven't gotten to that section yet, lol.

Right now my only concern is figuring out Plex Media Server, because I cant add the last data drive until I can shut down the Windows Server, and I cant shut down the windows server until AFTER I migrate my Plex data. I am currently trying to research that process.

High water calculates the amount of free space available for each drive and will then fill the drive with the most free space until it has used half that space. If the drive has 8TB free it will write to the drive until there is only 4TB free.

However, your split level setting overrides the allocation method. If your split level setting is too restrictive then allocation is ignored and Unraid will continue to write to the same drive. Be sure split level is set to “Automatically split any directory as required” to prevent this.

It also may be that if you move a bunch of data in one big transfer, that write will continue until completion without re-calculating high water. Just a guess on my part though. Perhaps @trurl can comment on that?

In regards to Plex I would suggest seeking help in the Plex forum. You may also be able to get help in the support thread for whichever Plex docker you installed. They should all have a dedicated support thread you can access by clicking the docker’s icon and selecting “support”.

Thanks for the information. Yes I have it setup that way, but the first 8TB drive I installed has only 2TB of space left and the second drive I installed only has 2.65 GB used, lol. So the data isn't leveling as I expected. At least the data is already on the UnRAID server though, so that's a relief.

Yeah I am making great headway. Already figured out that I had created folders incorrectly so I installed Krusader to fix that and moved a lot of data/folders around the way I want. Every baby step is taking me hours of reading, watching and learning.

EDIT: I just read the split-level topic in the shares section of the documents and I believe it may be working correctly as-is, so no worries about that. I will be watching to see how it works over time.

Edited December 11, 2025Dec 11 by SkOrPn

Remember you can activate the help menu on any page by clicking the question mark.

Quick question. I just noticed that I cant create or delete folder in the root of the drive from other locations on the network. I can only do that from inside folders already made. Why dont I have access to manage the root of the drive from other machines on the local net? I'm still reading but have not seen anything that mentions that.

31 minutes ago, SkOrPn said:

Quick question. I just noticed that I cant create or delete folder in the root of the drive from other locations on the network. I can only do that from inside folders already made. Why dont I have access to manage the root of the drive from other machines on the local net? I'm still reading but have not seen anything that mentions that.

Any directory added at the root would be a new share. You must add shares from the webUI.