i have setup an unraid server and i have created 3 shares so far and for some reason they have all gone to disk one. i have created all the shares with the high-water setting. Not really sure if this is normal.

Totally normal. See here.

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#High_Water

If you want all drives filled roughly evenly, then choose Most Free, so it will round robin the disks as you add content. Split level and includes / excludes also effects which drive is used for new content, so be sure you understand the consequence of changing (or not) those settings.

hmmm.. maybe i am not understanding or i have gotten something set wrong. If highwater "The high water allocation method attempts to step fill each disk so at the end of each step there is an equal free space left on each disk." then way is it all on one disk?

 

Or maybe more details will help.

I have a backup share. where my laptop is backing up to (its a mac using timemachine) about 430gb but the backup in not complete its probably in the 75gb backed up. A media share which has 5 folders but on one 600mb file in one of them. all this is on disk 1 and there is nothing on disk 2.

 

I am new to unRAID so i may not have everything setup right or gone about making shares in the correct manner.

hmmm.. maybe i am not understanding or i have gotten something set wrong. If highwater "The high water allocation method attempts to step fill each disk so at the end of each step there is an equal free space left on each disk." then way is it all on one disk?

 

Or maybe more details will help.

I have a backup share. where my laptop is backing up to (its a mac using timemachine) about 430gb but the backup in not complete its probably in the 75gb backed up. A media share which has 5 folders but on one 600mb file in one of them. all this is on disk 1 and there is nothing on disk 2.

 

I am new to unRAID so i may not have everything setup right or gone about making shares in the correct manner.

You quoted the first line of that wiki article. Study the rest of it for a better idea of what is actually meant by "step fill" as it pertains to high water allocation.

hmmm.. maybe i am not understanding or i have gotten something set wrong. If highwater "The high water allocation method attempts to step fill each disk so at the end of each step there is an equal free space left on each disk." then way is it all on one disk?

 

 

Keep reading.

 

The idea is to progressively fill each disk but not constantly go back and forth between disks each time new data is written to the array. Most times' date=' [b']only a single disk will be needed[/b] when writing a series of files to the array so the array will only spin-up the needed disk. The high water level is initially set equal to one-half of the size of the largest disk. A new high water level is again set to one-half of the previous high level once all the disks have less free space than the current high water level.

 

Emphasis is mine.

 

That first sentence can lead you to the wrong conclusion about High Water if you don't continue and see the discription of the step filling process.

 

If what you want is for files to be added to the array such that for each file the disk with the most free space is written to… (without considering modifiers based on split level and excludes and includes) then I think you want Most Free, not High Water.

 

Edit: I want to chime in here, and say that when I first set up my unRAID box I had trouble understanding the logic and issues with setting up shares / split levels / excludes / includes and allocation methods... Maybe the Unoffical / Offical wiki needs to be scrubbed for possible improvement in communicating this information. It's kind of important, and if you do it wrong the first time, it can end up costing you a lot of human and cpu time to fix it.

I read the entire section... many times so it maybe that it is a combination of the way the wiki communicates it (as gundamguy stated)  and my logic (or lack there of). I appreciate the patience as i flush this out.

I created a share for backup and started to back up a laptop. so there for that data is being written to the share on drive 1.  I then created a share called Media. i did nothing else. My logic would be that since drive 1 has data on it and using the highwater  to step fill, the next set of data would go to the drive that had the least data on it. The back up will be the largest set of data as it will be 400gb when done. Media has the potential to be larger but i don't have that much to move to it yet. But given the way it is now everything will be on disk on (unless having the split on the media share at 2 will change where it puts data and it hasn't done that as there is just 600mb in that share right now.) I will go looking for more info and see if i can better understand it.

 

The only reason i really questioned it was i didn't want get to far down one road and need to change it later on and not be able to or be extremely difficult.

 

I would have to agree with Gundamguy, the split levels, and all that is the only thing that i have had trouble with in the setup.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

 

I read the entire section... many times so it maybe that it is a combination of the way the wiki communicates it (as gundamguy stated)  and my logic (or lack there of). I appreciate the patience as i flush this out.

I created a share for backup and started to back up a laptop. so there for that data is being written to the share on drive 1.  I then created a share called Media. i did nothing else. My logic would be that since drive 1 has data on it and using the highwater  to step fill, the next set of data would go to the drive that had the least data on it.

No - the only thing that would cause data to go to the other drive is that the first drive reaches the half-way full point to trigger the highwater allocation method into using the other drive.

Ah i see. So it will fill disk one to 50% and then move to disk to and fill that to 50%. then go back to disk1 and fill to 50% of the remaining then back to disk 2 and so on.

Ah i see. So it will fill disk one to 50% and then move to disk to and fill that to 50%. then go back to disk1 and fill to 50% of the remaining then back to disk 2 and so on.

Yes - that is how the allocation method operates.

 

One thing to know is that Split Level setting overrides the Allocation method.    Depending on the value chosen for the Split Level setting this can mean that a particular file is constrained to a particular disk because of the number of folder levels in the path.

Can i change the Allocation method once the shar is created? Is high water the ideal way to do it or does it matter?

Share settings such as allocation method and split level can be changed at any time, and only affect future writes to the share. Anything already written will not be moved.