Need some help setting up my UnRaid disks. I have (4) 4TB disks and a Cache drive. All the groundwork is done and I am ready to start copying files to the server. (about 5,500 files) I am also going to set up my Unraid to work with PLEX. I want to have separate folders for Movies, Music, Photos, TV Series, Kids Movies.

Does it matter which of the 3 drives I set the folders up on?

Do I need to make folders on all 3 drives?

Can I just copy/paste from my PC to the target folder?

 

Just create user shares with those names and let unRAID worry about what disk. Probably best if you don't even try to access specific disks, at least until you learn more.

Just go into the webgui and create user shares named:

 

Movies

Music

Photos

TV Series

Kids Movies

 

Do not change any settings.. Unraid will take care of everything for you.

Thanks. I have about 6+ GB of movies, 4+GB of music and 2+GB of photos and home movies. If I make the Directory Folders on the DISK1 and start copying files to the "Movie" folder what happens when I reach/exceed the 4GB of HD space on disk1? Does UnRaid automatically spread the files out between all the installed disks?

If you write files directly to disk1, they will eventually fill it up, and it will run out of space. If you write files to the user0 or user mount points, they will be distributed across disks, depending on your share and system settings.

 

Beware of copying or moving files from disk to user!

Thanks. I have about 6+ GB of movies, 4+GB of music and 2+GB of photos and home movies. If I make the Directory Folders on the DISK1 and start copying files to the "Movie" folder what happens when I reach/exceed the 4GB of HD space on disk1? Does UnRaid automatically spread the files out between all the installed disks?

 

As long as you copy to the user share (so copy to TOWER\Movies) then Unraid will use all of your drives.. So you are not limited to the size on one of the disks. Should you copy data to a disk share (like Tower\disk1\Movies) then you will fill up disk1 and you have run out of space (but if you then copy to Tower\Movies again you will magically have all available storage again).

 

It might be a bit hard to grasp but that is only because it is in essence so easy you might not believe its true..

 

1) Create user shares

2) Do all your file actions towards those user shares (so never copy to Tower\disk?)

 

That way Unraid will make sure you have the total free storage of all your drives combined for every user share.

 

What happens underneath is that Unraid creates the user share on all of your disks and the moment you list the folder contents of Tower\Movies unraid will "underneath" add up the contents of all the Movies folders on all individual disks and present them as one folder.

 

If you now try this you might notice that unraid does -not- create that Movies folder on every disk, that is because it starts by filling up one disk and as soon as that one fills up it will start using another one...

 

If you now try this you might notice that unraid does -not- fill up a disk before it starts using another one.. That is because you can set up several strategies for this (distribute evenly, fill up, etc.).

 

 

BIG TIP: Just start using it before you try and start understand all of this.. its way easier to understand once you are using it.. And also do not fiddle with all those settings at first...

 

1) Create user shares

2) Use user shares

 

Its not more difficult then that..

And as I said earlier

... Probably best if you don't even try to access specific disks, at least until you learn more.

because

Beware of copying or moving files from disk to user!

If you want to explain your directory structure for each of those shares and how you'd like them stored then we can suggest initial share settings. I recommend this before you go off and end up with something you decide you want to fix later. Personally, I would not use the default settings to initially fill a new server.