I have 5 * 4TB drives, so 16TB total.  I was copying to the master drive (not disk1 or disk2) and it ran out of space!!  I thought it would fill up disk1 to about 1TB free and then move on, but no.  It's set to split level 1.  What did I do wrong?  Is it my responsibility to move data between the disks myself? I didn't think this was required.

Most likely cause would be split level 1. Why did you set it like that? I'm not saying it's wrong, just that you need to have a good handle on why you set it that way.

unRAID is completely new to me, I'm realizing I'll have to split data myself.  There is no way unRAID will know that Music will easily fit on one drive while Video will have to span all 4 drives to fit.  I'm going to clear the array and start over taking a more manual approach.

If you have shares for Music and Video you would set the split level for Music to 1, and include only the disk you wanted it on, and the split for Video to 2 or more, and leave include and exclude blank, depending on how you have your folder structure organized.

 

You shouldn't have to delete everything, just turn on disk shares and use those to move things around until they are balanced better.

 

Now, if you only have one giant share and want to allow unraid to spread data around semi randomly, you would just set split 99 and let the high water fill disks in round robin.

I do want similar data on same drives.  I don't want a drive spinning up because I listen to a specific song.

With 4TB drives, it's unlikely you need your Music share to be on more than one drive ... so I'd set the "Include" for it to a single drive, and not use a split level.

 

For the Movies share, you could either leave the Includes/Excludes blank;  or, if you want it limited to specific drives, list those on the Includes line.    Depending on how you have the movies stored, you'll probably want a split level of either 2 or 3 (I use 3).

 

Another alternative, of course, is to not use any split level, and to simply copy your movies directly to the shares on individual drives.    e.g. if your Movies share "Includes" disk2, disk3, disk4 ... you can either copy to \\Tower\Movies ... which will let UnRAID decide which disk to put the data on;  or you can copy to \\Tower\disk2\Movies ... which will write what you're copying to disk 2  (clearly you can change the disk #) ... but it will still be accessible via the Movies share.

 

The way I manage my unraid is this... I share the disk drives hidden and rw. I share the user shares visible and read only. I write data to the disk shares, and let the clients access the user shares. That way I am in complete control of where things are written, and the media clients can't do brain dead deletions.

Keep in mind that split level overrides other allocation methods (my understanding). UNRAID will find the first drive with the share/directory matching the split level and write to it.

Split level and allocation method are both often-misunderstood.

 

The simplest way to ensure split level never causes issues is to not use it 

 

The only time that results in any splitting of media across disks (e.g. a movie with the VOB's on different disks) is when the allocation method results in the choice of a different disk for a subsequent file associated with the same movie.    And that's relatively rare for any allocation method except "most free".    And will NEVER occur if you copy directly to the disks instead of to the share.

 

The different types of media will split across drives just fine if you set it up right. Share both your media directory structures and how you want the media stored if you want help.