I've read through the Wiki on how to setup user shares but I'm wondering if there are any links/resources to how most people have their shares setup or any best practices that should apply to most peoples' home media server needs?

Not that much, but there is something I have learned.

 

Unraid does not rebalance its drive usage, meaning that if you at some point decide to have a share on one complete disk or something you will need to do manal copying, that is an easy task and I personally prefer it above a system that tries to be intelligent by itself..

 

However.. That copying gets extremely more difficult if you set your SPLIT LEVEL wrong...

 

If you have a movies share with all your movies in it, set your split level to 1, that means that a movie folder will only exist on one disk

If you have TV share with all your series in it, they mostly have a subdir for the season, set your split level to 2 (that keeps seasons on one disk) or 1 (keeping the complete serie on one disk).

 

I have everything wide open and that means that at some point you must combine all those files and that was kind of a pain..

 

Setting split level to 1 is a safe setup if you want to keep it easy. That means that every folder UNDER a share will only exist on one disk.

 

I like to keep my Movies and TV Shows sub-divided by letter for easier folder navigation so I always add an additional level (i.e.2 for Movies, 3 for TV).

Currently the way I have my folders setup on my current file server (before moving it to my UnRAID server) looks like this:

 

Movies

-Action/Adventure

-Comedy

-Drama

-etc, etc.

 

TV Shows

-Arrested Development

--Season 1

--Season 2

-Band of Brothers

--Season 1

-Boardwalk Empire

--Season 1

--Season 2

--Season 3

--Season 4

etc, etc.

 

 

Now I'd like to keep this structure because I also use my server as an FTP server and I find it easy to find things this way.  So my question is how can I keep this folder structure while making it work best with UnRAID.

For Movies, a level of 2 seems to be a good idea.  For TV use 2 to keep a series on one drive, or 3 if it is only a season you want to constraint to a disk.

Create a share for each media type. TV, Movies, Storage, EBooks, Pictures, Music etc.

 

I keep a complete TV series on a single disk so I use a split level of 1 for my TV share. If you want to do this, then I'd recommend you set the allocation method to most free and copy the continuing TV series over first. That will divide all those TV shows fairly evenly between the disks so that new episodes of the different TV series will be added to the different disks as they are aired. Otherwise, you can end up with all the continuing shows on a single disk which might end up full as new episodes air and are added.

 

As for the others, decide how much space you want vs the disks you are using vs the amount of data you are placing in the share. You may want to confine certain shares to a single disk which may make it easier to manage the server at some point in the future.

For Movies, a level of 2 seems to be a good idea.  For TV use 2 to keep a series on one drive, or 3 if it is only a season you want to constraint to a disk.

 

Create a share for each media type. TV, Movies, Storage, EBooks, Pictures, Music etc.

 

I keep a complete TV series on a single disk so I use a split level of 1 for my TV share. If you want to do this, then I'd recommend you set the allocation method to most free and copy the continuing TV series over first. That will divide all those TV shows fairly evenly between the disks so that new episodes of the different TV series will be added to the different disks as they are aired. Otherwise, you can end up with all the continuing shows on a single disk which might end up full as new episodes air and are added.

 

As for the others, decide how much space you want vs the disks you are using vs the amount of data you are placing in the share. You may want to confine certain shares to a single disk which may make it easier to manage the server at some point in the future.

 

One of you is saying a split level of 2 keeps a series on a single disk and the other is saying a split level of 1 does that.  Haha, little confusing there.

 

I think Movies and TV shows are probably going to be the only shares that will span over multiple disks over time.  My server currently has 6 * 3TB drives in it (1 for parity) and I doubt very much that my music folder is going to get bigger than 3TB considering it currently sits at 125GB.  Same thing goes for shares like Stand-Up Comedy, Music Videos, Software, eBooks, etc.).

 

How do you guys organize your downloads such as torrents for example?  Do you have a Downloads/Torrents share that you just save files directly to or do you download to a temp directory not on your UnRAID server and then copy the files over after the fact? 

 

Also, is there any documentation on what values are taken in each of the fields (Min. free space, included/excluded disk(s), etc.)?  I'm just unsure as to what values to enter in those fields.

I have no idea why itimpi posted that, but it's not true for the directory structure you listed. For that structure level 1 will keep the whole series on a single disk.

 

 

Jim, i use a cache drive to hold my downloads.

 

\\tower\cache\apps\transmission\downloads\movies or tv or whatever.

 

make the apps share, "cache only".

Jim, i use a cache drive to hold my downloads.

 

\\tower\cache\apps\transmission\downloads\movies or tv or whatever.

 

make the apps share, "cache only".

 

When you do this does that mean you have to manually move the files from cache to the array?  I only have a 128GB SSD as my cache so I'm just wondering how that would work if I'm downloading a torrent that is really large (sometimes I have multiple 50-100GB torrents going at once).

not at all. i have couchpotato and sickbeard running. they move the files to the user shares during post-processing. then the mover moves them to the array in the middle of the night.

not at all. i have couchpotato and sickbeard running. they move the files to the user shares during post-processing. then the mover moves them to the array in the middle of the night.

 

Interesting.  Never used couchpotato before but I've heard of it.  I'll have to look into that.  Thanks.

Is there any reason not to use just 1-2 main shares and then just create directories below that for how you want to organize your data?  The reason I ask is that Samba usually is the limiting factor in terms of transfer speed from what I've seen and if I have to move files around between shares I'd think it would be much slower than if it was just being moved between the same share but from one directory to the other.

 

Then again I may be interpreting the situation incorrectly.

The downloads would have to complete before they can be moved somewhere else so it's not a good idea to use a 128gig drive to hold the share for torrents if the torrents need more room than that. I'd recommend you get a bigger drive for the cache and use the SSD in a PC where you'll make better use of it.

 

I really don't think there is much difference moving share to share or within the same share. It will be slow if you move from one array disk to another array disk no matter how you access the files. SAMBA just updates the file table if you move within the same disk so those moves are quick.

Maybe not typical but I don't worry about split level because I write directly to disk shares and read from user shares. That way I am in complete control of where files get put but other users and apps don't have to worry about what disk something is on.

Maybe not typical but I don't worry about split level because I write directly to disk shares and read from user shares. That way I am in complete control of where files get put but other users and apps don't have to worry about what disk something is on.

 

That's interesting and I kind of like that idea.  However I also like the idea of the data being split amongst my drives evenly in case I were to lose 2 drives that way the chances of me loosing a huge chunk of data at once is minimized.

Create a share for each media type. TV, Movies, Storage, EBooks, Pictures, Music etc.

 

I keep a complete TV series on a single disk so I use a split level of 1 for my TV share. If you want to do this, then I'd recommend you set the allocation method to most free and copy the continuing TV series over first. That will divide all those TV shows fairly evenly between the disks so that new episodes of the different TV series will be added to the different disks as they are aired. Otherwise, you can end up with all the continuing shows on a single disk which might end up full as new episodes air and are added.

 

As for the others, decide how much space you want vs the disks you are using vs the amount of data you are placing in the share. You may want to confine certain shares to a single disk which may make it easier to manage the server at some point in the future.

 

I created a share called "TV" with a split level of 1 and choose most-free as the allocation method.  I left included and excluded disks blank.  However it only created the TV share on disk 1 and put all the shows I copied over onto that disk.  Do I have to enter all my disks into included disks?  I assumed that leaving it blank would include all the disks in the array but maybe not?

The way you have it setup sounds correct and should work. Yes, if you leave both included and excluded disks blank, then all disks are included by default.

 

I assume your TV share is organized as such: TV -> series name -> season -> episodes?  Also, I assume all of your disks are of the same size with the same amount of free space?

The way you have it setup sounds correct and should work. Yes, if you leave both included and excluded disks blank, then all disks are included by default.

 

I assume your TV share is organized as such: TV -> series name -> season -> episodes?  Also, I assume all of your disks are of the same size with the same amount of free space?

 

Yes, I have 5 * 3TB drives in the array (not including parity and cache) and they are all completely empty.  The TV share only shows up on disk 1 and when I copy series' over (using TeraCopy) it puts them all on disk 1 (after I manually initiate the mover from cache).

 

 

From what I can follow, you copied some files and they were first placed on the cache drive and then they moved to one of the array disks.

 

So, what was the structure of the files you copied.

 

If you tested with a single TV series then that whole series will go to a single disk.

From what I can follow, you copied some files and they were first placed on the cache drive and then they moved to one of the array disks.

 

So, what was the structure of the files you copied.

 

If you tested with a single TV series then that whole series will go to a single disk.

 

You are correct except I copied 3 TV series' at once and it put all 3 onto disk 1.  I was expecting it to place different shows onto different disks.

Ok, I doubt this has anything to do with it, but just to clarify: Did you manually create the TV folder on disk1, or was it automatically created when you created the share in the webGUI?

Ok, I doubt this has anything to do with it, but just to clarify: Did you manually create the TV folder on disk1, or was it automatically created when you created the share in the webGUI?

 

It was automatically created on disk1 when I created the share.  I haven't manually created any folders on any of the disks.  I simply created the TV share, and then copies 3 TV shows to that share.  Once the copy was complete I could see all 3 shows on disk 1 and there is no TV folder on any disk except disk1.

 

EDIT: Well I did some testing and when I copy to the TV share which I mapped to a drive in Windows it does work as intended.  Yet when I copy to the TV share found under //Tower/TV in Network places it does not.  Interesting.  Well at least I got it to work and that's pretty much how I'd be copy files over from this point anyways.

The files were placed on the cache drive first in all your testing?

 

I can't see how having a mapped drive would cause it IF you are using the cache drive. Once the files are on the cache drive then the mover does the work to place the files onto the array which has nothing to do with the network or how the files got on the cache in the first place.

 

If the files are going directly to the array then the way you copy may be the issue. It's possible Terracopy creates the directory structure first and then places the files. So, it would create all the directories on the array disk first and then fill them. unRAID would have no way to stop that because by the time one disk had less free space the split level would have locked the series to the disk.

 

 

The files were placed on the cache drive first in all your testing?

 

I can't see how having a mapped drive would cause it IF you are using the cache drive. Once the files are on the cache drive then the mover does the work to place the files onto the array which has nothing to do with the network or how the files got on the cache in the first place.

 

If the files are going directly to the array then the way you copy may be the issue. It's possible Terracopy creates the directory structure first and then places the files. So, it would create all the directories on the array disk first and then fill them. unRAID would have no way to stop that because by the time one disk had less free space the split level would have locked the series to the disk.

 

The TV share is setup to use the cache drive so yea the cache drive was used both times.  I had to manually kick off the mover both times for it to copy to the array.  I used Teracopy both times though so I'm not sure either why it worked the second time through the mapped drive.