Another newbie here with what's probably a novice question , but I have a system with four 3Tb drives where, obviously, one of them is set up as the parity disk, leaving me with total storage of about 9Tb.  I also have two linked 250Gb SDDs for cache which seems to be paired and working properly.  My question is that I guess I was expecting the stored data to be somewhat balanced across the 3 disks as storage builds up.  Instead, it appears that all data is going exclusively to the first disk with nothing on disks 2 and 3.  Is that normal or did I set up something incorrectly?

 

I've checked the forum (admittedly, I may not have searched on the correct terminology), watched setup videos, and tried to see if this is correct or not, with nothing conclusive to point to.  Are my expectations just off, or did I set up something incorrectly?

 

If this is normal, when can I expect the other drives to "kick in"?  When disk 1 hits 70%, 90%, 100%, or ?? 

 

Aside from this, I am absolutely pleased with the performance of this system. 

I had a similar experience.  The system used Disk 1 up to certain percentage, I believe 50%, then it will start then start populating the Disk 2 up to 50% and so on.

Edited April 16, 20179 yr by joedotmac

Depends on your settings.

Specifically use the built in Help system on the Shares > Share Settings > Allocation Method setting.

 

 

Edited April 16, 20179 yr by BRiT
PIX!

Okay.. Thanks BRiT.  That makes all the sense in the world.  Appreciate the quick response!

The way that unRAID is behaving is normal under high watermark.  It's a bit frustrating to watch if you had a different idea how it "ought" to work...  but I'd urge you not to fight with it - it works.

Thanks all for the quick responses.  It seems that I was a bit anxious for no good reason and, now that I understand how it is intended to function, all is well.

 

I really appreciate the feedback, tutorial, and clarification...