What is the current highwater split level number that means:

 

"do not create a new folder on a new drive"

 

I have tried the old 0 level and the new 999 level and both do not work.

What is the current highwater split level number that means:

 

"do not create a new folder on a new drive"

 

I have tried the old 0 level and the new 999 level and both do not work.

 

The only thing I can think of is to put the drivwe in the share exclusion list.

 

Cheers,

Matt

I have shares /TV/A/ etc

 

way to much like hard work to try and deal with that using includes or excludes.

 

Unless i am getting the config wrong (which wouldn't be a first for me and split levels) this could be a bug and would explain why I constantly have to recover from highwater excessive drive spanning

Why not try something like 20?  (and of course make sure there is ALWAYS extra free space available)

 

Edit:  I apologize.  My thinking was completely backward.  The correct value is probably Split level = 1.  See JoeL's post below.

Will try

Maybe you could provide a more detailed example of your directory structure and of the shares as you've entered them in the setup screen?

 

If you have

TV/A

TV/B

TV/C

etc and don't want the A, B, C to split then use 1. Level 1 means only the share can split but any directories under it can not.

 

I thought we've posted about this before? I think you need to consider also manually creating the directories across the different hard drives so your files get somewhat spread out. Then, you might just have to shift the alphabet directories drive to drive every now and then to even things out. I have no idea how you could handle putting say and "A" directory on more than 1 drive though.

 

Level 0 allows the share to go everywhere however it wants. See here;

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2130.msg15701#msg15701

 

Apparently, Level 0 used to represent nothing could split across drives but now means split however it wants to as of version 4.3, 1 means the share, 2 means the share and subdirectories under that share,... 999 means anything up to 999 subdirectories deep.

 

Peter

 

What value means "don't create directory's only use ones that exist already"?

 

This would be post version 4.4.

 

Example:

 

I have:

 

//tower/disk1/other

//tower/disk2/other

 

Highwater and split level 999

 

If i copy stuff to this share it creates

 

//tower/disk3/other

 

Edit: we did talk about this before but in that scenario I wanted a certain config. This time I want highwater to not create any new folders ever which if i read the manual correctly should be 999. But its not.

 

 

This is the reason i do the include and exclude disks thing.  I found highwater, and split level to be confusing when i first started using unRAID so i just went the route of setting include and exclude disks and it seems to work fine for me.

If need be I will go that route. It is less convenient but a viable option.

 

However either I am doing the config wrong on there is a bug so I would like to understand that first

If need be I will go that route. It is less convenient but a viable option.

 

However either I am doing the config wrong on there is a bug so I would like to understand that first

If you are creating your files in TV/A, TV/B, TV/C, etc, then the A,B & C directories are at level 2 and the TV directory is at level 1.

 

If you set you split level to 1 it should never split when you are writing to A, B or C since they are at level 2.  (setting it to 20 as suggested earlier is wrong as it indicates it is OK to split at any level down to level 20.  I doubt you have directories that deep.) 

 

Long ago, split level of zero was the default, and it meant to never split.  In the post linked to above Tom described he changed 0 to be equivalent to 999, and that it is still the default, but now it indicates ANY directory may be split. (He changed to eliminate many many more support calls)

 

At the time, your same question was asked.. how to force it to not split.  His answer, to use the include/exclude fields.  He was asked if -1 might be coded to indicate never split, but he never implemented that.

 

Yes, the documentation you read is out of date and needs to be changed.  Tom it the only person with those editing permissions.  Send him a reminder to fix the documentation, and to impliment -1 as a do-not-split-ever value.

 

Joe L.

Joe thanks for the very clear post.

 

I will go through and set all my disks to be includes and PM Tom now

Added a link to Joe's post to the FAQ question, What should I set 'Split Level' to?.  I found it to be a different way of viewing the levels, that clarifies what to set the split level to.  Feel free to edit, of course.

 

I do apologize for my own suggestion of 20, my thinking was backwards.

This has always confused me.  To summarize this, then:

 

Long ago, split level of zero was the default, and it meant to never split.  In the post linked to above Tom described he changed 0 to be equivalent to 999, and that it is still the default, but now it indicates ANY directory may be split. (He changed to eliminate many many more support calls)

 

Am I to understand that there is no split level that will prevent splitting across drives in a share?  Is excluding drives really the only option?  I'm excluding drives right now only because I could never decipher how split levels were supposed to work.

I have to agree that split level is very confusing. Perhaps this can be fixed by the GUI project to present it graphically with real user data as examples.

 

If i read everything correctly there is no way to stop splitting at present. I have sent a PM to Tom to this regard.

 

It explains an awful lot really of my constant battling with drive spin up

As I understand it, from Joe's post and the other examples, setting Split Level to 1 effectively prevents splitting across drives.  To implement correctly, you would create the second level folder yourself ahead of time, on the one drive you want it.  So if //Tower/Movies is the top level folder, using NAS example with 3 drives for the Movies share, you would create //Tower/Movies/A through //Tower/Movies/I on the first drive, then //Tower/Movies/J through //Tower/Movies/R on the second drive, and //Tower/Movies/S through //Tower/Movies/Z on the third drive, and you should no longer see any splitting across drives, as long as you correctly specify the second level folder to save a movie to (eg. //Tower/Movies/G/Godfather).  This is nothing that I have tried, so it has to be confirmed.

This has always confused me.  To summarize this, then:

 

Long ago, split level of zero was the default, and it meant to never split.  In the post linked to above Tom described he changed 0 to be equivalent to 999, and that it is still the default, but now it indicates ANY directory may be split. (He changed to eliminate many many more support calls)

 

Am I to understand that there is no split level that will prevent splitting across drives in a share?  Is excluding drives really the only option?  I'm excluding drives right now only because I could never decipher how split levels were supposed to work.

No, it means there is no setting (other than include/exclude) that will prevent splitting at the top level 1 folders that are your user shares.

 

If you store individual .VOB files for a movie in a folder named for that movie, and those folders named after the movie titles are all in a top level folder named "Movies," then setting it to split level 1 will allow use a of subsequent disk when you create a new folder named for a movie, but all the files for a given movie will be on the same disk.  Now, creating a folder seldom takes much room, so you are very likely to always get the title folder on the disk you want.  You do need to be careful, as all the individual files for that movie might not have the room they need on that same disk, and they will just run out of room rather than spill over to another disk.

Understood. Its way to complicated though... count this... subtract that.... but only if the answer is >0.....but if your using this versions this means that.... and 999 actually doesn't actually mean that even thought it says it does... and 1 works if you add a subfolder... etc .... etc

 

Its a powerful feature but needs some finessing to make it more intuitive.... and a -1 option

As I understand it, from Joe's post and the other examples, setting Split Level to 1 effectively prevents splitting across drives.  To implement correctly, you would create the second level folder yourself ahead of time, on the one drive you want it.  So if //Tower/Movies is the top level folder, using NAS example with 3 drives for the Movies share, you would create //Tower/Movies/A through //Tower/Movies/I on the first drive, then //Tower/Movies/J through //Tower/Movies/R on the second drive, and //Tower/Movies/S through //Tower/Movies/Z on the third drive, and you should no longer see any splitting across drives, as long as you correctly specify the second level folder to save a movie to (eg. //Tower/Movies/G/Godfather).  This is nothing that I have tried, so it has to be confirmed.

This is my understanding of how it works...  I tend to fill drives each in turn.  I use single .ISO files, so a given movie is always on a single drive, and I've made no attempt to put an alpha range on a given disk, as I've added physical disks as I needed room.

 

I do have a shell script I run that creates additional User-Shares. parallel with my "Movies" share, that each contain links to the movies in an alpha range. (Think of links as very similar to window's shortcuts.  The difference is that in Linux, every directory entry is a pointer to the data blocks for that file (in effect a shortcut) and you can have multiple links to the exact same data blocks... each with their own directory, and even with different names.  So.. my movies are in two shares, a consolidated listing of all, and an alpha range listing... without taking twice the space.

 

So... now that you are confused, I see in my media player a "Movies" share with ALL my movies from all my drives, and a "Movies A-E" with that alpha range, and a "Movies F-J" with that range, and a "Movies K-O" with that range, etc... every movie has an entry in the main "Movies" share and in one of the alpha range shares.  Yes, I need to wait for a disk to spin up when I select it... but my listing is more manageable in my media players (in the alpha range shares) as I've got over 900 DVD's in my library and on the server's main "Movies" share.  My split level is either 0 or 1 depending on if I created the share or not, as I always copy to the disk share where I know I have space.

Does anyone else think that the new GUI could present this is a much slicker and easier to understand way?

Does anyone else think that the new GUI could present this is a much slicker and easier to understand way?

I would... I think I now have a headache after reading this thread... but I believe I now understand how splitting works.

NAS- from your description I don't see why "1" won't work.

 

As I understand it, from Joe's post and the other examples, setting Split Level to 1 effectively prevents splitting across drives.  To implement correctly, you would create the second level folder yourself ahead of time, on the one drive you want it.  So if //Tower/Movies is the top level folder, using NAS example with 3 drives for the Movies share, you would create //Tower/Movies/A through //Tower/Movies/I on the first drive, then //Tower/Movies/J through //Tower/Movies/R on the second drive, and //Tower/Movies/S through //Tower/Movies/Z on the third drive, and you should no longer see any splitting across drives, as long as you correctly specify the second level folder to save a movie to (eg. //Tower/Movies/G/Godfather).  This is nothing that I have tried, so it has to be confirmed.

 

Level 1;

 

- Means the first level share directory ( the Movies directory) can be split across the drives without restriction. If you set up a Movies share with just level 1 set and then copied files to the Movies share you would eventually have a Movies directory on every disk.

 

- Any subdirectory created under the Movies share will not split. If you create the "A" directory on disk3 then it will stay there and everything dropped into it will be there too. So, if you start with "1" and put every movie into a alphabet sub-directory when you move them over then those "A" to "Z" directories will get created on the most empty disk and not move again. The problem with this is that if you copy a mix of movies right from the start you could end up with "A" to "M" all on the same drive and that drive would fill-up and run out of space.

 

- If you go to //Tower/disk2/Movies/ and copy the files into there then it would not split. This is going right to the disk itself and bypassing the share and it's split settings.

 

 

Rob, how about this to make your example clearer.

 

Create the directory structure like this

 

on the first disk;

//Tower/disk1/Movies/A

//Tower/disk1/Movies/B

...

//Tower/disk1/Movies/I

 

on the second disk;

//Tower/disk2/Movies/J

//Tower/disk2/Movies/K

....

//Tower/disk2/Movies/R

 

on the third disk;

//Tower/disk3/Movies/S

//Tower/disk2/Movies/T

...

//Tower/disk2/Movies/Z

 

Set-up a Movies share and set the split level to "1". Once you do this then none of the alphabet directories will ever jump to another drive on their own.

 

Peter

 

You are absolutely correct and I apologist for using that example and causing you alot of typing work.

 

My main problem is with other folders that have no fixed structure after level one i.e. //tower/other