I have 5 data drive, 1 parity drive, 1 cache drive in my unraid pro server.  I initially had a user share "Media" which I set with a split level of two giving me the following structure. (Note there are other user shares however they don't have any relevance on this scenario)

 

Media

------Movies

-------------movie1.iso

-------------movie2.iso

------TV

-------------Series 1 (folder)

-------------Series 2 (folder)

------Anime

-------------Series 1 (folder)

-------------Series 2 (folder)

 

  This means that items within Movies,TV,Anime could span drives, but anything folders in the directory structure (i.e. everything within Series 1) would be forced to the same disk.  This means that I have items from Movies, TV, Anime are on every one of the data disks, so looking in any share often causes all the data disks to spin up unnecessarily.  Initially this was fine (started with 2 drives) but now that I have 5 data disks, I'd prefer to consolidate my top level folders (movies,tv,anime) such that I only have to spin up one or two disks.

 

  I've already rearranged all the folders/files on the server in the following way:

 

Disk 1: Media->TV

Disk 2: Media->Anime

Disk 3: Media->Movies

Disk 4: Media->Movies

Disk 5: Media->Anime

 

  The problem is that I don't have separate user shares for Movies, TV, Anime, they are all folders on the user share "Media".  This means I can't restrict the disks used through user share settings.  I don't want to have separate user shares for the different categories.  The other option of course is to use disk shares when adding files to the server and just use the user share for accessing the files for playback (i.e. media player).  This wouldn't be terrible except that I have some users who can't have access to everything on the server.  Unfortunately unRaid doesn't allow you to restrict access to disk shares by user.  It's everyone has read/write or no one does.

 

The final option I've explored is the possibility of now lowering the split level on the media share to 0.  What effect will this have.  Is it too much to hope that it will only place files on disks that already have the corresponding folder?  Such as adding a file to the Movie folder through a user share would place the file either on disk 3 or 4?  I haven't experimented with this and honestly doubt it works this way.

 

I'm scraping for ideas here and it may just be that there is no perfect solution.  I would appreciate any input/ideas/experiences anyone may have that might help.

So I tried lowering the split level for the "Media" user share to 0.  I then added files to the "Media" user share under folders "TV" and "Movies".  Unexpectedly, the files added to TV went to disk 1, and the files added to Movies went to disk 3.  So it actually worked as I had hoped, at least in part.  The question now is when disk 3 fills up, will it make the switch and put files added to Movies on disk 4.  I don't have time at the moment to add a bunch of files and test this part at the moment.  Hopefully someone else knows the answer to this, or I'll find out when it fills up.

 

Assuming it works in this manner, with a split level of 0, it will add to any disk which already had the correct directory structure, then we could artificially enforce which disks are written to by setting a split level of 0 and manually creating top level directories on the disks we want under the correct user share.

So I tried lowering the split level for the "Media" user share to 0.  I then added files to the "Media" user share under folders "TV" and "Movies".  Unexpectedly, the files added to TV went to disk 1, and the files added to Movies went to disk 3.  So it actually worked as I had hoped, at least in part.  The question now is when disk 3 fills up, will it make the switch and put files added to Movies on disk 4.  I don't have time at the moment to add a bunch of files and test this part at the moment.  Hopefully someone else knows the answer to this, or I'll find out when it fills up.

 

Assuming it works in this manner, with a split level of 0, it will add to any disk which already had the correct directory structure, then we could artificially enforce which disks are written to by setting a split level of 0 and manually creating top level directories on the disks we want under the correct user share.

That is exactly how split level of 0 is supposed to work. It will not create directories, it will use those already created.

Split level 0 is described in the release notes here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3760.0

If you want to minimize the number of disks that spin up when you are browsing for something to watch, why not just create three separate user shares: TV, Movies, and Anime.  You can leave the disks organized as they are, just get rid of the 'Media' level.  If you media player can connect to your current 'Media' share, it shouldn't have any trouble connecting to three separate shares instead.  You can also use 'included disk' and 'excluded disk' for each user share to specify which disks they are allowed to use and which ones they aren't.

 

As for actually implementing this, I'm sure there's some command line way to go about it that doesn't result in you actually moving any files.  However, not knowing this process, I would probably just do it the slow and easy way:

 

1) Create a new user share called 'TV'.  Do not enable the cache drive for the share at this time.

2) Move the contents of Media/TV into TV (a cut-paste is fine, or a copy-paste if you are paranoid and have the space to spare)

3) Repeat with 'Movies' and 'Anime'.  If you have a lot of files, just start one transfer each night for three nights.

4) Once you have moved everything and you are confident that it is in its proper new home, you can delete your 'Media' user share, and any files still within it (assuming you did copy-paste, otherwise the folders will already be empty).

5) Go back into your settings and enable the cache drive for each of your new user shares.

 

I recently underwent this same process when I had to rename my 'Documentaries' user share to 'Docs' so that XBMC would recognize it.  It took a long time for the transfer to finish, but otherwise it was painless.  The bit about not enabling the cache drive is important, though, because otherwise you will be doing all the transfers twice - once to the cache drive, then again back into the protected array.  That will also put your data at temporary risk since anything on the cache drive is not in the protected array.

 

Thanks you for the feedback and clarifications.  I thought I understood how split level 0 worked, but guess not.  This clears it up and actually works very well as a solution for me.  As for splitting Media into different user shares, I was trying to avoid that as I know some jukebox setups have issues using multiple shares. I also wanted to avoid having to mount any more network shares as drive arrangement has gotten pretty cluttered between physical drives, virtual optical drives, and network shares.

 

Thanks everyone for your help.