Hi,

 

I'm running v5.0.5 with a share that's split between two 2TB disks in an array of 4 2TB Disks. Currently, there is no data  on any of the disks.  I am using the "High Water" allocation between disk1 and disk2 with file level 2 settings. As I start to send files over it seems all of the files are going to disk1 only. Now the unofficial manual states UnRAID will fill the first disk to 1TB (half of available space)  before it will begin to fill the 2nd disk on the "First Pass". My question is what is a "Pass"?  When does this occur? What triggers a "Pass"?

 

Thanking you in advance.

the unofficial manual states UnRAID will fill the first disk to 1TB (half of available space)  before it will begin to fill the 2nd disk on the "First Pass". My question is what is a "Pass"?  When does this occur? What triggers a "Pass"?

Each copy event that adds data to the server is a pass. Depending on the source, it may even be each file, but possibly more than one file may be transferred before the condition is triggered. In a multithreaded copy event with several large files it would be possible for each file to start and then grow beyond the threshold, so you could pass the halfway point by quite a bit before the next file would be allocated to the new disk. If you have multiple machines each copying a large file that would cross the boundary, unraid has no way of knowing the boundary will be crossed until it actually happens, so each file will be on the first disk.

 

This is why you have a setting for minimum free space, so you can tell unraid not to copy to a disk after it is mostly full. You can always copy directly to the disk share instead of the user share to finish filling up the disk if you want.

 

 

Thanks, you answered the question in the back of my mind I need to set a min. free space.

 

Thanks again.

 

A pass as used in the wiki occurs each time unRAID cycles through and puts data onto each drive. The trigger to move to the next drive occurs when the drive in use reaches the current high-water level. In your case, the first pass is occurring as disk 1 and then disk 2 fill to be over 1/2 full at which point it goes back to disk 1 and begins filling the drives to be 3/4 full.

 

The split level over-rides the high water setting and the minimum free space setting. So, with too low a split level all your media will keep going to a single disk no matter what you set for allocation or min free space.