Hello everyone, I'm a newbie to unRAID and appreciate any insight to my problem.  I am running version 5.05 and started with the free version (3 disks).  I created a SMB share to be used across two data disks and one parity disk, and began copying data from my computer to the share.  After seeing how great things were, I decided to purchase the Pro version, and began a staged approach to copy data to this share (from drives on my desktop), and then as I freed up space from the hard drive(s) attached to my desktop, I would pop those drives one by one into my unRAID configuration. 

 

The goal was to expand my share into these new drives.  Every time I added a new drive, unRAID forced me to clear and then format the disk.  I attempted to expand my existing SMB share by adding the disk# to the included disks section of the share properties.  However, I just noticed that my capacity of the share had not increased beyond the capacity of the first and second data disks of the free version.  I've powered off/rebooted my unRAID box.  I've ensured the included disks section includes the new disk drives.  The share properties only show that the copied files are dispersed across the first two data disks.  I added four additional data disks to this setup, and no data has been dispersed on these disks (I also ensured that I had precreated the share directory on these new disks as I did on the first two disks).  Changing the share properties to "most free" which to my understanding should put files on the new/unused disks does not do so (data is still only on the first two data disks).

 

Have I done something wrong, or am I misunderstanding how expansion of shares works in unRAID?  Sorry for being a bit redundant in my post... I wanted to give as much detail as possible.

 

Thanks in advance for anything you can do to help!

You only need to set the include (or exclude) list of disks if you do not want the share to use all your disks.  If you want to use all disks it is better to leave it blank as then you do not have to do anything when new disks are added to the array.

 

It might be worth including a screenshot of the share settings so we can see how you have it set up.  I suspect that the behaviour you are seeing will be understandable once we see those settings.

...Every time I added a new drive, unRAID forced me to clear and then format the disk...

Not related to your question, but it sounds like you don't know about preclearing. It will let you clear the disk in advance and can help avoid adding bad disks to your array. Having all other disks in good health is critical to the ability of unRAID to easily recover when a single disk does go bad.

@itimpi - thanks for the response.  I attached four screenshots, and some more background.  I REALLY appreciate the help!

 

The first shows my main page and the disks that I currently have in my array.  I have a parity disk, 5 data disks, and the flash drive. I added these one at a time in stages.

 

The second screenshot shows the main shares screen for my share named "merchandise".  I created the "merchandise" directory on all 5 data disks by addressing each one directly from my desktop over the network (e.g. \\[iP of my unRAID box]\disk1 -- created my "merchandise" directory, and then repeated for the remaining disks, e.g. \\[iP of unRAID box]\disk2  , then disk3, etc)

 

The third screenshot is the share settings for that "mechandise" share.  Per your advice, I blanked out the "included disks" section.  However, I left the allocation method as "most free" to see if it would force some of my data to disperse onto disk3 or beyond, but no luck.  I rebooted the unRAID box just to make sure, and unfortunately, same issue.

 

The forth screenshot shows what happens if I click in and browse my "merchandise" share from the unRAID GUI.  There is a sub directory called "jdl" that is about 1.8 TB of data that only ever allocated to disk1,2.  After I blanked out the "included disks" section of the share settings, and copied new data from a directory called "Richard", you can see that the disk that the "Richard" directory is on is disk2 still.  I would expect it on disk3 or another disk that has more free capacity (i.e. other than disk1 or disk2).

 

@trul - you are correct.  I did a search on the preclear, and found the post.  I did not follow that procedure.  Could this have something to do with my issues?

 

THANK YOU GUYS!

 

Did you apply these settings before rebooting, and then check that they "stuck" after the reboot? The settings made in the unRAID webGUI are written to the flash drive and read on boot. There are sometimes problems that would make the flash drive unwritable.

@trurl -- Thanks for the response.  Yes, I ensured that the settings stuck after a reboot.

 

Strange thing... I created a new share, and it looks like the max capacity is the same as the "merchandise" share that I originally created.  That is, it doesn't seem to ever use more than the original 1 parity and 2 data disks from the free/trial version.  If my new share were to be called "backup"... should I create the "backup" directory on each drive directly first, then create the share in the unRAID GUI?  Or should I create the share first, then go and create those directories?  I have tried both methods, and neither helps getting me past disk1-2 usage.

 

Perhaps I just need to scrap the whole thing and start fresh?  That will be difficult because I have data already on disk1-2 and don't have enough swap space somewhere to copy it off while I rebuild everything.  This shouldn't be necessary in my opinion, but all of this may seem like more trouble than it's worth. 

 

I appreciate everyone's insight.

Any folder at the top level of cache or any array drive is automatically a share in unRAID. If you create those folders manually then unRAID will consider them shares with default settings, and you can edit those settings as you wish.

 

If you create a share without manually creating any folders, unRAID will create them as needed when it needs to write files to them.

 

Any share settings you have made are in /boot/config/shares. Each share has its own .cfg file there. I think if you stop the array, delete those .cfg files, and then start the array, unRAID will set the shares to default settings and you can go from there.

On the settings tab there is a global share settings which also has an include and exclude area. Check that you didn't put something in there that is limiting your shares.