Video Demo: Managing Game Libraries with unRAID User Shares


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Videos help "sell" stuff, for sure.

 

I'd at the very least make sure you have a youtube channel going, and that when you search the internets "in general" you get linked to them. Then they will find their way here.

 

Also do some basic "setup" or "what could your old pc do as a nas" video/etc.

 

I see you have most of that already, so keep up the good work. Again, these days I do think that if you can find a video of it on youtube, it goes a long way towards promoting your product.

 

Is there a hardware video, maybe about hooking up drives, showing how flexible it is to get unRAID booted and shares created (maybe even showing how you can recycle hardware/etc)?

 

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I was using this method for awhile till i had problems with certain games.I ended up switching to a vhdx image running on my cache pool.

Can I ask if the games you had issues with were Steam or Origin (or others)?

 

What kind of issues did you have specifically?

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Guys, when Jon showed me this video, a lightbulb hit and I was floored with the performance.

 

I set a User Share as using Cache (not no, or only).  I then disabled the ehreceiver service in Windows, rebooted, renamed my Recorded TV folder, and setup a symbolic link to the User Share.  I then copied the data from the old Recorded TV folder to the symbolic link (the user share).  I re-enabled the ehreceiver service, rebooted, and now I have SSD cache for recording and watching live tv, and any recordings automatically get moved to my array at night for array protection.  Live streams get deleted once the stream closes, so they never touch the array.  This is a perfect solution for Windows Media Center.

 

I believe this will only work in Windows 7, as Windows 8 will detect it's a symbolic link and prevent you from setting that as the Recorded TV location.  I may have missed a step or two, but the end result is perfect and doesn't require any sort of archiving or moving of my recorded tv data now (other than the already automated mover of cached files).

 

If you're using any media center to record tv, I highly recommend setting yours up this way.

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Guys, when Jon showed me this video, a lightbulb hit and I was floored with the performance.

 

I set a User Share as using Cache (not no, or only).  I then disabled the ehreceiver service in Windows, rebooted, renamed my Recorded TV folder, and setup a symbolic link to the User Share.  I then copied the data from the old Recorded TV folder to the symbolic link (the user share).  I re-enabled the ehreceiver service, rebooted, and now I have SSD cache for recording and watching live tv, and any recordings automatically get moved to my array at night for array protection.  Live streams get deleted once the stream closes, so they never touch the array.  This is a perfect solution for Windows Media Center.

 

I believe this will only work in Windows 7, as Windows 8 will detect it's a symbolic link and prevent you from setting that as the Recorded TV location.  I may have missed a step or two, but the end result is perfect and doesn't require any sort of archiving or moving of my recorded tv data now (other than the already automated mover of cached files).

 

If you're using any media center to record tv, I highly recommend setting yours up this way.

 

Just tweeted a link to this specific reply.  Thanks reluctant!

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i just watched a couple of videos on the youtube channel.

 

call it os x once more i dare ya, lol.

 

What you talking about sparkles?  It is called OS X?  Click the apple then about!  It says OS X Yosemite on the macbook pro I'm lookin' at.

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i just watched a couple of videos on the youtube channel.

 

call it os x once more i dare ya, lol.

 

What you talking about sparkles?  It is called OS X?  Click the apple then about!  It says OS X Yosemite on the macbook pro I'm lookin' at.

 

type

 

say OS X

 

into terminal window.....

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Would it be possible pointing multiple VMs to the same games share?

Currently sharing my Steam library with my son (using Steam's Family Sharing) on two different gaming PCs.

Considering creating two VMs to replace the dedicated machines, so pointing both of the machines to the same user share wil dedup the games installations

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Would it be possible pointing multiple VMs to the same games share?

Currently sharing my Steam library with my son (using Steam's Family Sharing) on two different gaming PCs.

Considering creating two VMs to replace the dedicated machines, so pointing both of the machines to the same user share wil dedup the games installations

 

Hmm, I haven't personally tried, but I don't see why not. And if it had an issue with two VMs sharing access like that, there is something we have in store for the future that would definitely solve for this...btrfs snapshots.

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Would it be possible pointing multiple VMs to the same games share?

Currently sharing my Steam library with my son (using Steam's Family Sharing) on two different gaming PCs.

Considering creating two VMs to replace the dedicated machines, so pointing both of the machines to the same user share wil dedup the games installations

 

Hmm, I haven't personally tried, but I don't see why not. And if it had an issue with two VMs sharing access like that, there is something we have in store for the future that would definitely solve for this...btrfs snapshots.

 

The only issue that I can think of will be game saves. I think most are now saved in the Steam Cloud. Gamesave Manager is also another option to backup game saves. Another site as a reference to gamesave location: http://savelocations.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

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Will there be any performance gain by spreading a game over multiple disks?

Like RAID0 reading from multiple spinners at the same time ?

I think what you are asking is if you store part of a game on disk 1 and another part in disk 2 in an array, will you get a boost.  If my understanding of your question is accurate, then no, you will not get any gains

 

With RAID-0 this only happens because the blocks of a file are spread across multiple disks, but with unRAID, each individual file that has to be loaded lives only on a single disk, so each file loaded will happen at the speed of the single disk.

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Guys, when Jon showed me this video, a lightbulb hit and I was floored with the performance.

 

I set a User Share as using Cache (not no, or only).  I then disabled the ehreceiver service in Windows, rebooted, renamed my Recorded TV folder, and setup a symbolic link to the User Share.  I then copied the data from the old Recorded TV folder to the symbolic link (the user share).  I re-enabled the ehreceiver service, rebooted, and now I have SSD cache for recording and watching live tv, and any recordings automatically get moved to my array at night for array protection.  Live streams get deleted once the stream closes, so they never touch the array.  This is a perfect solution for Windows Media Center.

 

I believe this will only work in Windows 7, as Windows 8 will detect it's a symbolic link and prevent you from setting that as the Recorded TV location.  I may have missed a step or two, but the end result is perfect and doesn't require any sort of archiving or moving of my recorded tv data now (other than the already automated mover of cached files).

 

If you're using any media center to record tv, I highly recommend setting yours up this way.

 

Jon had mentioned this solution to me for some other issues that I was having, however I never attempted it.

That's awesome it works for you, however what has changed or what info do you have for it not working for Windows 8?

I ask as I would attempt (running 8.1) however if it is known to not work, then I will leave what is working alone!

 

Just tweeted a link to this specific reply.  Thanks reluctant!

 

That's where I seen this, and I never had used Twitter much up until now to talk to LT...  ;D

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  • 4 weeks later...

will this work if you move the games to a user share instead of a disk share? I'm setting up a Windows gaming VM on a SSD mounted outside of the array?

 

I don't think I need to add the extra path to Steam since everything happening on the VM is on that SSD. I would like to be able to do the same kind of archiving but to a user share instead of a disk share.

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  • 4 months later...

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