yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 I have two drives installed in my server (no parity yet). Disk 1 is a 3tb drive to which I copied all my data. I then added disk 2 which is a tb drive. After I copied my data I went in and set allocation split level to 2 for all the shares on Disk 1 (Movies, Music, etc.) Will unRAID start spreading the filed on Disk 1 throughout both disks in the array? Did I do this generally correctly? Sorry for the noobish question, still trying to figure this all out. Greg Link to comment
trurl Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 No. Those changes are only applied to future writes. unRAID does not move data already written to the array. Tapatalk from CM10.1 Kindle Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Should I try to change this? If I should, what is the best method? Link to comment
TheWombat Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 If you want to move directories/files between disks then the best way is to log into the UnRaid console using telnet (for example). Then type 'mc' to start Midnight Commander, then browse to /mnt/disk1 on the left hand of the screen, and browser to /mnt/disk2 on the right hand side of the screen (or vice-versa) and then "copy, check and delete" or "move" the desired files/directories between the disks. In my experience you may want to have a different split level for Movies, Music and TVSeries depending on what directory structure you use. You can check here for more information on Split Levels: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#Split_level For Example I use Split Level 2 for Movies, and Split Level 3 for TV Series as my directory structure is: \VideoHD-Movies\[movie name (year]\[file.mkv] \VideoHD-TV Series\[tv series name (year]\season [n]\[file_s0nE0n_.mkv] This means that (in theory) any files for a specific movie are kept on the same disk, and that any files for a specific tv series season are kept on the same disk. As others have stated - this only comes into consideration when you copy new content into the Shares, it does not change anything that has already been copied. Depending on how you structure your content you may decide on a different approach. TheWombat Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Thanks for the help Wombat. I have one other question. If I want the TV Shows to be on the second disk, should I move them using MC to the second disk and then make that share split level 3? Link to comment
TheWombat Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Thanks for the help Wombat. I have one other question. If I want the TV Shows to be on the second disk, should I move them using MC to the second disk and then make that share split level 3? I would suggest moving them via Midnight Commander from mnt/disk1 to mnt/disk2 (or whichever way is appropriate). As you would be moving them directly via the disk rather than the user share (/mnt/user/[share name]) the split level won't matter for doing this move. Once you have moved the files you can then set the split level, however the split level only has an influence if you share is set to span multiple disks. I would suggest setting up separate Shares for Movies, TV Shows, Music e.g. \Movies \TV Shows \Music Then go to the 'Shares' tab, click on the share you want to edit e.g. "TV Shows". In the "Included disk(s)" you can either include "disk1,disk2" or just "disk2" depending if you want your TV Shows to span both disks or just one disk. If it is set to just "disk2" then the split level makes no difference. I personally like to have my Movies on different disk(s) to my TV Shows however in reality there is no need. Just depends on what your future plans are. hth TheWombat Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Sweet, thanks for the awesome guide. Will consider it and figure out how to best set it up! Link to comment
TheWombat Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Remember it is easy to add more disks later and expand your Shares across them. Sent using Tapatalk Link to comment
garycase Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 There's really no reason to worry about where in your array specific files are written. The whole idea of having shares is to eliminate the need to determine just where to write data. The split level allows you to control, to some extent, what will be "split" among different disks (primarily so you won't have pauses during access when a disk needs to be spun up); but conceptually it simply doesn't matter. If you want to control which disks include which share; just set the "include" or "exclude" parameters for the share -- or with only two disks, simply don't use shares, but write directly to the disk you want. Link to comment
mrow Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Using cache_dirs also takes some of the pressure off making sure split levels are set up properly. With cache_dirs only the disk the file you're accessing will need to be spun up. This way even if say, episodes of a TV show are scattered across 10 different disks, only the disk with the episode you want to play will spin up. Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 So I set my Movies share to Split Level 2, Highwater, and include disk1,disk2. So, when I copy a new movie to the Movies share, it should span both disks, or just one disk? I ask because I copied a 18 gb movie to the Movies share after setting these share parameters and it only copied to disk1. Disk 2 is completely empty and I would like the server to start allocating files to that space. Sorry for the noobness of all this. Link to comment
TheWombat Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 An individual file will sit on a single disk only. Sent using Tapatalk Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Sorry, I guess I am not being clear. Why didnt the file copy to the disk2 instead of disk1? I figured it would span the file over to disk2 given that the disk2 is empty. Link to comment
Joe L. Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Sorry, I guess I am not being clear. Why didnt the file copy to the disk2 instead of disk1? I figured it would span the file over to disk2 given that the disk2 is empty. It has not yet used disk2 because you configured it to use "High-Water" Configure it to use most-free if you want the disks to fill equally. (assuming equal size disks) Or use fill-up if you want them used in turn. No single file will ever be written to more than one disk. See the explanation in the un-official user-manual here: http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual Joe L. Link to comment
itimpi Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 You mentioned you are using the High Water allocation method? If so files are copies to the first disk until it is half full, and then files start being copied to the next disk (more detail on this method is in the wiki). If you want it to be done by most free space then change the allocation method to use that one instead. Link to comment
yukonhijack Posted April 24, 2013 Author Share Posted April 24, 2013 Got it! Thanks for all the explanations fellas. I appreciate your help. Link to comment
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