OK, I setup my unraid this weekend with two 3 TB hard disks.  I precleared first.  Then I transferred my files over to disk 1.  I then added my parity drive and did a parity check.  All the lights are green, however, there are no files showing on disk 2.  Shouldn't the same files be on both disks?

If you copied files to disk1, why would you expect to see them on disk2?

 

You have 2 data disks + parity?

unRAID uses the parity drive to achieve redundancy, not mirroring your files from disk1 to disk 2...

Yes, I have two disks for unraid and 1 parity drive.  I will be adding a cache drive shortly.  I guess I am expecting to see files on the second drive also.  When will unraid use the second drive?

After re-reading all about unraid, I am wondering if my problem is that I copied all my files over to disk 1 creating the sub-directory Movies, instead of copying them to the Share named Movies.  Do I need to start over with copying my files to my unraid server?  If so, how do I do that?

After re-reading all about unraid, I am wondering if my problem is that I copied all my files over to disk 1 creating the sub-directory Movies, instead of copying them to the Share named Movies.  Do I need to start over with copying my files to my unraid server?  If so, how do I do that?

 

Its not going to hurt anything having the files only on disk 1.  In the future if you copy them to the share "Movies", then depending upon your split levels and the allocation method (most free, high-water, etc) then unRaid will place them on the appropriate drives.

Yes, I have two disks for unraid and 1 parity drive.  I will be adding a cache drive shortly.  I guess I am expecting to see files on the second drive also.  When will unraid use the second drive?

 

You won't ever see those files on disk2.  unRAID will start to put new files on disk2 as disk1 starts to run out of space (see Squid's post on allocation method).

 

Going forward it will be most convenient to access your files via user Shares.  That way you won't care which disk the data is on - the user share will aggregate that information for you and present everything in the Movies folder regardless of which disk it is on.

Thanks for the replies.  I think I understand how unraid works now.  I think I should have copied the files over to the Share "Movies" and not to the disk directly, but they are on disk 1 now and like the previous poster said, moving forward unraid will take care of the files as they are copied and moved, etc.  Now I am just waiting for my drive to show up to setup my cache drive so I can setup SAB, Sickbeard, Couchpotato, etc.  One last question....does a cache drive have to be precleared?

Preclearing is recommended for any new disk to give it a good burn in test. A byproduct of the preclear process is the drive contains the "preclear signature", which allows the disk to be quickly added to the protected array.

 

So if the cache disk is new, I would recommend you preclear it to test it out. The preclear signature is not useful but also does no harm. If the disk is one you have been using and you don't feel the need to test it under stress, there is no need to preclear it.