I use my licensed UNRAID for serving up shows and movies.  It also serves Music to my Sonos system.  It stores my photos.  I only have windows pc's.

 

I have been having some troubles understanding how to configure the system to best meet my needs, and landed myself in a bother.

 

My configuration is attached.  I am just about to re-add in my (second) WD RED 3TB drive.  (previously it dropped off during a power failure and did not re-attach, causing some problems).

 

What I would like to be told,  is how I should best configure this for these needs.  Things like "Allocation methods and spin up groups..

 

I have read the wiki's but I need this bit of extra help.

 

Thanks

It really comes down to YOUR preferences on how you would like it to work....

 

  If all your user shares are set to use any and all drives, which the one we see is, (which is also the default action)...  Then you may want to leave things as they are.  One thing you may want to change and/or check is the spin up groups.

 

  IF you want the best in power/disk heat-wear - you may want to make sure each disk is in its OWN spin-up group.  This will only spin up the one disk which has the specific file you are currently accessing.  This will however cause a delay till the next drive is spun up if switching to another file contained on a different disc.  For movies it would be likely acceptable...  for music it may not be desirable.

 

  If you just want everything to work quickly and without spin-up delays once you start accessing files, place all the disks in the SAME spin-up group.  This will cause all the drives to spin-up whenever any data is accessed so as you switch to a file from another disk, no additional delay will be seen.

 

  For me, I like all my drives in separate spin-up groups.  I also never write directly to the user shares, though I do have them enabled.  Instead, what I do is write directly to the shared directory after first going to the disk I wish to write to.  For example, I have my first disk for TV series that start with the letters A-I.  So I have a "TV Series" user share, and in my case \\Tower3\disk1\TV Series then has folders with A-I tv shows in them.  disk2 has J-R...  This make it easy to make back-ups and do whatever I want with a specific series for maintenance.  It also is still very easy to watch anything I want.  Since a full series is not spread across multiple drives, there are no delays when switching from one episode to the next either, while still letting the other drive sit quietly without using much power, or generating heat.  All my music I keep on a single disk not shared by other files.  This works well for me, but may not be the choice for you.

 

  One more thing, I have all my user shares set to READ ONLY, and my disks set to READ/WRITE and HIDDEN!  This makes it again easy for me to do anything I want, such as updating episodes and fanart, but still not making ready access except to read the files when browsing the server from another computer or media player.  Another reason I do this is so I do not need to worry about someone accidentally deleting or altering my files!

 

  So what it comes down to, is sitting down and deciding what you would like in an ideal world... then think about how to set up unRaid to best meet those desires!  :-)

 

 

Hey thanks.  What you suggest sounds like what I need.

So,  to effect this...

1.  I assign a different group name to each spin up group.

2.  In terms of writing directly to the disk not through the user share,  how do i do this ?  For instance from my windows pc,  I normally map a drive to \\Tower\Myshare.  What would I do instead ?

Here are more details referring to your line item numbers:

 

1.  Each spin up group does have a specific name.  Every drive assigned to a specific spin up group will spin up together when that spin up group is accessed.

 

2.  For this example I am using:

a. an unRAID server named ur_5rc8a; (unRAID version: 5.0-rc8a)

b. a user share named Acronis, with SMB Security Settings:

Export: Yes

Security: Secure

(in ver 4.5.3 was called Export read-only)

c. disk1 SMB Security Settings:

Export: Yes (hidden)

Security: Public

(in ver 4.5.3 was called Export read/write)

 

  To access for normal READ ONLY protected access:

  You can browse to the visable path...

 

\\ur_5rc8a\Acronis

 

  To WRITE to the hidden path directly to the specific disk:

  Just add the desired (hidden) disk name in the path...

 

\\ur_5rc8a\disk1\Acronis

 

  I find it easier to just use the full paths... not mapping drive letters...

 

NOTE:  I specified the exact versions I am using for V5 and V4 in case there are some differences between other sub-versions.  but you should be able to see where I am going with it if there are differences on a specific version you may be using that is different from what I am using...