I'm rather new to unraid, so this may be a newbie error.

My setup consists of:

1 USB system flash drive

2 SSD cache drives

2 HDD parity drives

4 HDD data drives

I like to have full control of the data drives and what goes in each, so I'm not particularly fond of the Allocation methods; however I thought I found a way that works for me.

I created my first share, left the Allocation method default (High-water), set the Split level to Manual and chose Disk 2 for Included disks.

I create a user, gave it permissions to this share and copied over a bunch of data.

This worked fine and I could see the data going only to that disk in the Main tab of Unraid.

I then create a second share, same settings except this time I chose Disk 1 for Included disks.

Copied over some data and saw the data going only to that disk in the Main tab of Unraid.

The problem started when I created a third share (soft2).

Again, used the same settings, but chose Disk 3.

Copied over some data and upon inspection I realized it had copied to Disk 2 instead.

I figured I might have made a mistake and selected Disk 2 in the dropdown.

No problem, I created a new share (soft02) for testing, and chose Disk 3.

Right after the new share is created, I click on it to see it's settings: it is set for Disk 2

I edit it and choose Disk 3, and to avoid it getting changed automatically, I set all other disks as Exclude disks.

Now the share shows it has 0 bytes free (despite all my disks having lots of free space), and if I click Compute I get the message:

Disk 2 Share is outside the list of designated disks.

I tried copying over some files, or creating a folder, but it always says the disk is full.

As I'm writing this, I figured I'd try to recreate the share (same settings) and do the Include Disk 3 + Exclude All others right from the start.

Share still says 0 bytes free, but now wen I click on Compute it shows:

Cache Size 0B Free 489 GB

Any ideas why this is happening?

And suggestions on how to fix it? Ideally without me having to let Unraid allocate/split the data on its own.

I just want to be able to create shares and decide which disk is used for each share/data.

Hope this makes sense. Let me know if I need to provide additional details, logs, screenshots, etc.

TIA

You are likely to get better informed feedback if you attach your system’s diagnostics (with everything in the one zip file) to your next post in this thread. It is always a good idea when asking questions to supply your diagnostics so we can see details of your system, how you have things configured, and the current syslog.

Diagnostics attached.

bits-diagnostics-20260512-1103.zip

That share is set to not use cache, but all its files are on cache. Just making the setting to not use cache will not move anything. And mover won't move it because there is no Mover action because there is no Secondary.

3 hours ago, pool7 said:

Include Disk 3 + Exclude All others

You should never set both Include and Exclude (maybe recent versions won't even let you).

Include means Only the listed disk(s), so all others are already excluded.

Exclude means Except for the listed disk(s), so all others are already included.

There is no good reason to think you should set both of these, and possible inconsistencies could result.

I apologize if I'm misunderstanding some basic concept.

I didn't intend to set both include and exclude, but unraid decided to choose which disk a share should be on its own (despite me telling it to only include one specific disk), that's why I figured if I set both it would have no choice but to stick to the disk I want it to use.

Again, I want to be the one to decide which data goes to which disk.

Just to clarify: there are no files in this share (soft02).

It is a new share I created. I told it to include only Disk 3 and unraid automatically switched to be Disk 2. Without adding files, I changed it to only include Disk 3 and exclude the rest (again, no files or folders were added to the share before or after this). After this change, it went to 0 bytes free (still with no data ever copied to it).

After recreating it (deleting the share, then creating it again with same settings and name), it now shows it is set to use Cache. Again, this was unraid deliberately making it so, despite me specifying which disks I wanted to include and which to exclude.

So I'd like to understand first:

-why is Unraid not honoring my choice for include/exclude? (be it one or both)

-why does it show the share as having 0 bytes free, despite there being plenty of space in all my disks?

-why does the share now shows 'Cache' when I click on Compute, despite the Storage column indicating it's in the array (which cache is not part of)?

-how can I force unraid to create the share(s) in the specific disk I tell it to?

I would just create a top level folder on the desired disk that is the name of the share you want there and it will automatically become a User Share. Then go into the settings for that share and make sure they are what you want. My suspicion is that there is some sort of interaction between the 'Manual' Split level setting and something else.

Figured I'd provide an update as the issue is fixed and it could help someone else.

I ended up submitting a support ticket and was assisted quickly, which was very much appreciated.

Support suggested first that when only including 1 disk in a share, the Split Level should not be set to Manual, but rather left as default (kudos to itimpi for suggesting this before!).

After some back and forth doing troubleshooting, it seems the problematic share's config file was apparently corrupted. Stopping the array, deleting the cfg file (under /boot/config/shares/) and restarting the array (array wouldn't start, so I ended up rebooting the machine) fixed the issue. I could then see all the share settings and modify them. The share's primary storage was listed as Cache; changed it back to Array and chose the corresponding disk in Included disk.

The share now shows the correct free space and I can create/copy files normally.

They couldn't say with certainty what caused all of this, but at least now I know not to use both Include/Exclude and to leave Split Level by default when including 1 disk.

Back to moving data.

Thank you everyone for your help!

5 hours ago, pool7 said:

The share's primary storage was listed as Cache; changed it back to Array and chose the corresponding disk in Included disk.

Mover won't move those files on cache

On 5/12/2026 at 12:48 PM, trurl said:

Just making the setting to not use cache will not move anything. And mover won't move it because there is no Mover action because there is no Secondary.

I guess I didn't express myself correctly in my posts.

I have no idea what Mover is (but will add it to the list of Unraid topics to read on) and I don't think I've mentioned it at any point.

The share being set to a Cache disk was all Unraid's doing on its own. I never set it to Cache. I set it to Disk 3; Unraid automatically decided it would go on Disk 2. Then when I started messing with the Include/Exclude, it decided at one point to set it to Cache and at the same time stopped showing me the settings so I couldn't change it back to a regular disk until I deleted the cfg file.

Hope this makes more sense as kind of a summary.

Edited May 22May 22 by pool7

12 hours ago, pool7 said:

no idea what Mover is

This includes that as well as other things about configuring shares.

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/using-unraid-to/manage-storage/shares/#primary-and-secondary-storage

I recommend reading that whole page on user shares that starts before the link I gave.

On 5/12/2026 at 12:48 PM, trurl said:

Include means Only the listed disk(s), so all others are already excluded.

Maybe Only is a better word than Include