April 3, 200917 yr I've read, and read, and read tonight, but I still can't wrap my head around it. I'm wanting a share such as follows: \\servername\Movies Underneath Movies would be 2 directories, BDRip and DVDRip. Underneath each of those would be individiual movie names: Alien, Back to the Future, Fight Club, etc. The individual movie names and all of their contents and subdirectories would only reside on an individual drive, while Movies, Movies/BDRrip, and Movies/DVDRip would span all disks eventually. I'm guessing I'd set my Movies share to level 1 ?
April 3, 200917 yr Follow this link. There are two links on split levels in the "Hail to the Chief" section (one fourth from the top, and the other at the bottom). I think they should clear things up for you. If not, post back.
April 3, 200917 yr Based on the new feature of using a "string" to define the split level he could use DRip as the split level instead of a number. It would create DVDRip and BDRip folders as needed across the drives, but not split files below those folders. (The "string" DRip in both those folder names) Joe L.
April 3, 200917 yr Correct me if I am wrong but based on Toms description (at bottom) as I understand it (see the NOTE section at bottom)... If he used "DRIP" as a string, then when he creates the folders DVDRip and BDRip, UNRAID will follow split rules (highwater or space) when creating these folders it will only create them on 1 disk (based on the split rules), everything under the string directory will stay on the same drive. In this case "DVDRip" and anything inside it will only be stored on 1 disk. As I understand the string method, the movie titles would have to have the string in them, thus in the example below the string "[" is in the title of the movies. This makes the string method not as useful unless you don't mind renaming all our movie folder titles rather then a category folder like "DVDRip" (unless you want everything copied to DVDRip to be on the same drive. As for the OP's question: As long as you hold strictly to the folder structure of SHARENAME\DVDRip (and BDRip)\TITLE\FILES, then you want a split level of 2. This tells the system that the first 2 directories in the path should be on all disks. AKA paths MOVIES\DVDRip\ and MOVIES\BDRip\ will be on all disks, folders below this will only be stored on 1 disk. Note that the top/first folder is ALWAYS your share name. Now if you change your data structure in your "Movies" share then things will get wonky. Say you decided to store music on the "Movies" share, and you stored your movies like Music\Artist\Album\track.mp3. You copy the whole "Music" directory to your "Movies" share, this is what your path will look like... MOVIES\Music\Artist\Album\track.mp3 Since your "Movies" share is set to Split level 2 (Notice bold above, 2 directories, splitlevel 2), you will find that a Music folder will be created on all disks but Artist folders will only be on 1 disk no matter how many album folders you have in side them. i.e. Prince (all 10 albums) will be on disk1 and Michael Jackson (all 3 kiddie albums:) will be on disk 2... etc... Tom from Limetech - ....As you can see a single 'split level' will not do for this. So what you do is decide on a character or a string to 'tag' the directories that you don't want to split. Let's say we use the string "[" (ie, a single left-bracket). We then rename to this: Video [this is the user share] Movies Alien [DVD] [don't split this directory] Braveheart [blu-ray] [don't split this directory] Caddyshack [DVD] [dont' split this directory] Videos Vacations Hawaii [2002] [dont' split this directory] Mexico [2003] [dont' split this directory] Sports Softball Firecracker [2002] [dont' split this directory] Soccer Championship [2000] [dont' split this directory] So let's say we just created the 'Caddyshack [DVD]' directory, and now we're about to create 'Caddyshack [DVD]/video_ts'. When unRAID is about to crreate 'video_ts' it notices that split level for the share is set to "[", and it sees a "[" in the object's path, so it will create 'video_ts' on the same disk where it's parent directory exists, that is, whatever disk 'Caddyshack [DVD]' happens to be on. Then say we're about to create 'Caddyshack [DVD]/video_ts/video_ts.bup'. Well again unRAID notices there's a "[" character in the path, so it creates 'video_ts.bup' on the same disk where parent directory 'video_ts' exists, which will be the same disk that 'Caddyshack [DVD]' exists, hence entire 'Caddyshack [DVD]' directory contents will all be on the same disk. Note that when 'Caddyshack [DVD]' itself was created, there was no "[" in the path, so disk to create 'Caddyshack [DVD]' directory will be decided by unRAID based on included/excluded disks and allocation method (highwater or most-free).
April 3, 200917 yr Correct me if I am wrong but based on Toms description (at bottom) as I understand it (see the NOTE section at bottom)... If he used "DRIP" as a string, then when he creates the folders DVDRip and BDRip, UNRAID will follow split rules (highwater or space) when creating these folders it will only create them on 1 disk (based on the split rules), everything under the string directory will stay on the same drive. In this case "DVDRip" and anything inside it will only be stored on 1 disk. I think you are right... my mistake in adding to the confusion. As you might guess, I write my files directly to the disk shares, and don't bother with split-level at all. I think my idea may still work if he creates the DVDRip and BDRip folders on the disks he wants to store them on. Tom was not clear on which disk would be chosen in that situation. Joe L.
April 3, 200917 yr I really liked RobJ's suggestion about having the split level string apply to the last folder that can be split, (e.g., [Movies]), instead of the first directory that can't be split (e.g., "Braveheart [bluRay]". Same result, just easier to manage. Minor correction - "DRIP" would not work. Tom said the string was case sensitive. Would have to be "DRip".
April 3, 200917 yr I really liked RobJ's suggestion about having the split level string apply to the last folder that can be split, (e.g., [Movies]), instead of the first directory that can't be split (e.g., "Braveheart [bluRay]". Same result, just easier to manage. Minor correction - "DRIP" would not work. Tom said the string was case sensitive. Would have to be "DRip". Not sure if you will ever make everybody happy. My media-players are fussy about the folder names they display... I actually would prefer a way to do it without having to modify the folder names. Perhaps a "do-not-split" file in any given folder could be respected. Something that would not require a change to the media browsers and not show up in a media file listing.
April 3, 200917 yr These comments don't so much have to do with split level… but they kinda do so I figured I would put them here. I would love an option to "Fill in Order" for the allocation method. This method would essentially check which disks are set to be valid for that user share and then go in the order that they are specified. If no disks are set to be valid/invalid then it could fill the current disk that is being used for that share and then expand to the next one by creating the folder structure and going about its business. I currently do not mess with split level and those types of things as they confuse me a little to much (although if I really wanted to I could figure it out). I keep all my DVD's as .iso files so they obviously cannot be split across drives like a Video_TS folder could. I just set up which disks are valid and which are not for that point in time. As a disk gets close to full I remove it from the valid and set a different disk as the valid one. If that is not easy enough to understand then perhaps this example will help: My DVD's folder is currently on disk2, disk 3, and disk4. I had to fill disk 2, then remove it from the valid disks when it was full, then set disk3 as the valid disk, then remove it when it was full, then set disk 4. I do not currently have disk 4 full enough to move it so it will stay were it is for now. If I could select: Allocation Method: Fill in Order Included Disk(s): disk2,disk3,disk4 It would have done the filling of disk2 first, then disk3, then disk4 for me without me having to do any intervention. And Split level could be set to "ignore" as it would be pointless in this situation. If someone had the structure: /Movies/SciFi/Firefly/Video_TS /Movies/Disney/Bambi/Video_TS With the Allocation method set to "Fill in Order" if someone would copy a new movie (say Beauty and the Beast) to the Disney Folder it would put it on the same disk if it could, if that failed (because there was not enough space) it would create the /Movie/Disney/ folder on another drive and place the Beauty and the Beast movie there. Hopefully that explains it well enough. I would also like to see a "Minimum Free Space" setting somewhere (the same place you can control the individual disk spin down delays). I like to leave about 10GB or so free on a drive instead of filling it up all the way. Unfortunately most DVD rips are around 8GB, so they would get placed on a drive if there was 9-10GB left there. I don't really want that to happen. So this Minimum Free Space setting would be nice to have.
April 3, 200917 yr This has been hashed already, but.... How difficult would it be to implement a 'user-defined' high-water level? I would prefer to set allocation methods for a user share to 'high-water 95%'. Then it would fill up the first available disk to 95% before rolling to the next disk. Don't get me wrong, high-water is a good allocation method, and it worked pretty effectively for me until my disks reached about 85% and then it started getting messy. I have since reverted to manually copying files directly to the disk shares instead of the user shares.
April 4, 200917 yr Just curious Prostuff1, why do you prefer/use the order method? I am just now migrating 2.5tb to unraid, I originally thought about filling one disk at a time when moving my data, or keeping movies on certain disks and music on others etc. After some thought though imho it was a moot point. Eventually you will fill up your disks and when you add more the usershare will essentially so the same thing for you. If you have multiple disks that are empty, why not use them? Why not spread your data across all the drives to minimize losses in the event of some storage travesty? As I thought about it more and more I only cared about keeping certain data together on a disk, this means say a whole album of mp3, movie folder with movie + info files etc. I actually was liking the opposite, spread my data as much as possible, keep the actual data together but spread the filing/organization system as much as possible. Iif a loss happens, random data will be lost but I can't predict with a whole lot of certainty which drives will be effected by loss. I would rather risk losing %10 of each category then %100 of any one category of data... The main problem with split level, is mainly the UI, it tough to understand. There has to be ways to perform the exact same thing in a more user intuitive way. Split strings are a step in that path, if you want to rename your core files (movie titles, album titles etc). As bjp999 said, moving to indicate which folder to split rather then not is just the next step in easier UI setup and greater functionality. Another idea would be to just let users list file structure and wildcards like most file renaming apps use. It is fairly intuitive which most "media" users know. movies/<title> or music/<artist>/<album>. There could be tons of ways to indicate first non-split or last split etc etc using this type of system. You could probably even nest split data if needed.
April 4, 200917 yr I agree, here is a similar suggestion. I might have read that once before but I did not remember it at the time of my posting. Great minds think alike they always say Just curious Prostuff1, why do you prefer/use the order method? I mostly prefer it so that not all drives have to spin up when I am looking for a movie. If I had let the computer take care of it then there might be DVD's on 5 disks instead of only 3. It makes it slightly more work for me but in general I much prefer to know where my data is going without having to worry about writing directly to the disks. I tend to not export those so that the other people on my network can't inadvertently screw something up at that level.
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