I was curious if a script existed for when a person adds new drives, the script goes through and redistributes all the existing data to level capacity across all drives.  Typically I will do this manually cutting and pasting data, but I was just curious if there was a script out there that can automate the process.

Would really like it, if it existed but I doubt it will happen.

you could move the data to the cache drive and let the mover and share subsystem handle it for you

 

disk1\movies >> cache\movies

yeah, at that point if I am moving it to the cache folder I might as well move it to the new drive.

 

Not a huge deal, I didnt think it existed, but I figured it was worth a try.  I will continue with the manual process like I do now.  Just thought it was worth a shot to ask.  Thanks

Would really like it, if it existed but I doubt it will happen.

I'm sure it is not exactly what you need, but I did post a script that did something similar in this post:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11989.msg114306#msg114306

 

It outputs a series of move commands to move my movie files to disks in "alpha ranges" so that a range of titles are on each disk.  That way, if I am only browsing a specific range of titles, only a few disks might need to spin up.

 

I had alsoat that time another script to "link" the movies to a parallel set of directories that contained only the specific alpha range.  It was easier to browse for a title on one of my older media players that way since I had nearly 1000 titles, and to scroll through a directory listing starting with "A" took a long time to get to "Zodiac"

The alpha range of T-Z made it a little easier.

 

Be forwarned, it takes a long time to run, and sometimes it needed to be run multiple times as a move is skipped if space if not available.  (but might be next time if a file is subsequently moved from the target disk to another)

 

The basic logic might give you some ideas...  It first added up all the space used by movie related files and all the free space on the disks, excluding space used by data files which would not be moved, then it attempted to allocate the files so each disk would have the same percentage of free space remaining relate to its size.

 

It is not as simple process.

 

If you do not care about alpha ranges of titles being on the fewest disks, you could simplify the script.

 

Just be careful... one mistake in coding could leave you with no files.

 

Joe L.

Changing your allocation method from High-Water to Most Free will also get you closer to what you want without effort.  I can't validate this, but with a cache drive, it seems to pick the most free drive and complete all write operations.  When next the mover runs, if a different drive is now the most free it will be used.  So the levels between all discs will be mostly equal w/in the range of daily mover sizes, and it will only spin up that one disk.

 

Without a cache, I think you'll have to deal with one disk spinning up during a write op, followed by another disk spinning up (if it is now more free) during the next write op.  That might not matter to you, but just something to consider if you are looking to minimize spin-up time and power-cycles.