user shares ++

[lars]

hi all,

i am looking at completely new stuff here. was reading up on it in the wiki and researching in the forum here (btw, thx to everybody 'chiming in' here! it goes from extremely helpful to not at all... but it is active and usually you find some info. at least i did...

anyway, we are back to shares...

some of this stuff (keep in mind, i am building at the moment -first time- a unraid server) is a little hard to wrap your head around.

 

lets go rite to it, shares. easy enough. have hdd1, hdd2... hdd10

they will all be music ok!?

 

as my file tree looks at the moment (that would be pre-unraid) i have drives in the order:

hdd1/ music/ A/ 'artist'/ 'album'

hdd1/ music/ B/ 'artist'/ 'album'

etc.

spanning several drives, where hdd1 is going from A to E - hdd2 from F to K and so on.

each of this folders is anywhere between <100gb to >far over 250gb in size.

 

i try to keep my stuff in order, i add / exchange about 100gb +/- a week, that might be just added or swapped for better quality.

anyway, beside this 'backend' it makes it also easier to keep under control in several 'frontends' (subsonic. xbmc...). so far so good.

 

now to my prob, where i hoped for some improvement.

 

i was hoping that sth like hdd1/ music/ A...E is possible and once the drive gets really full, open another (say hdd2/ A) folder keeping it all in the share under .../A . seems to be impossible, since similar named folders are only accepted from the lowest hdd number!

 

that seems a little "oldstyle" to me! why can't i have hdd1/ music/ A and hdd2/ music/ A and have it recognized as 'folder' A??? really? that works in other software well!

 

not really complaining, ok! just wondering. it's all 'theoretical' at this point anyway, since my server is still in the building stage. just trying to clear up some of my questions upfront.

 

also, i would be happy to get some input/ advice in terms of 'creating' a 'best possible use' file structure to work around issues like that!

 

thanx in advance to all of you

lars

[Helmonder]

You should check out User Shares. You are still using individual disk shares and those have limitations.

 

What you want is absolutely possible using user shares.

[dgaschk]

i was hoping that sth like hdd1/ music/ A...E is possible and once the drive gets really full, open another (say hdd2/ A) folder keeping it all in the share under .../A . seems to be impossible, since similar named folders are only accepted from the lowest hdd number!

 

that seems a little "oldstyle" to me! why can't i have hdd1/ music/ A and hdd2/ music/ A and have it recognized as 'folder' A??? really? that works in other software well!

 

If A is a directory the user share system will merge the contents into single view. If A is a file then only the copy only hhd1 will be visible in the user share.

[lionelhutz]

You can do all that you ask. That's what user shares do.

 

I would recommend you use the user shares with a split level of 0. Manually create the music and A-Z directories on the disks where you want them. Then, any writes to music will go to the disk where you created the top level directories.

 

You're confused about dublicates. When 2 files exist in the exact same directory structure or a file name and directory name match then it's a a duplicate and the one on the higher disk isn't shown. For example;

 

disk1/music/A - the directory A exists here

disk3/music/A - a file called A exists here

 

Would combine so the directory A is visible but the file A would not be visible in the music user share.

 

These;

 

disk1/music/A/x.mp3

disk3/music/A/y.mp3

 

Will combine to show both in the music user share. Combining content on multiple disks is why user shares exist.

 

[lars]

thx all.

and especially thx lionelhutz! your post cleared that up nicely. yep i was obviously confused about the folder/ file issue.

well, thats good news .

i am sure it will become all clear, once the server is up and running. just trying to clear some poss. issues as i come across them while reading up on all this stuff. all new territory for me.

 

thx again, L