[SOLVED] [v6.3.5] Advice please on Shares settings

[soulman1949]

Hi

My system consists of 4HDDs (8TB each), of which one is parity and the other three are data drives. I also have a cache pool consisting of two SSD cache drives (500GB each).

 

At this stage I have set up 4 User shares:

AppDownloads - contains installation files for applications on my PCs with individual folders for each PC (eg PC1, PC2, PC3) and then in each of those folders, a subfolder for the Application concerned. I want to make sure that all Apps for a particular PC are in one drive.

Films – a folder for each film, again I want to make sure that all files relating to a particular film reside on one drive.

Photos – a folder for each year (eg 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) with subfolders within each year folder by date of shooting. Each specific year folder is to reside on one drive.

TV – a folder for each programme name with subfolders for seasons (where appropriate), again all files for each specific programme name are to reside on one drive.

 

I'm having difficulty getting my head around "split levels", especially as the terminology in the v6 Manual and what is actually in the Shares setup page is different (the former refers to levels 1, 2, 3, etc whereas the Shares setup has phrases like “automatically split only the top level directory as required”). Can someone clarify for me what my settings should be, please?

 

Secondly, I want to use the cache disks to hold the data initially before transferring to the appropriate share (providing there is enough space on the cache pool), so presumably “prefer” is the recommended option. I’ve seen a number of unRAID videos over the last few weeks and recall there was one which went through the various settings for dockers and data but can’t find the video concerned.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks

 

Alan

Edited August 25, 2017 by soulman1949

[JonathanM]

32 minutes ago, soulman1949 said:

I'm having difficulty getting my head around "split levels", especially as the terminology in the v6 Manual and what is actually in the Shares setup page is different (the former refers to levels 1, 2, 3, etc whereas the Shares setup has phrases like “automatically split only the top level directory as required”). Can someone clarify for me what my settings should be, please?

Split levels are tough to explain, which is why there are several different notations over the years. Have you turned on the help notations in the GUI?

33 minutes ago, soulman1949 said:

Secondly, I want to use the cache disks to hold the data initially before transferring to the appropriate share (providing there is enough space on the cache pool), so presumably “prefer” is the recommended option.

Definitely not. Cache:Prefer will try to make the final destination of all files in the share the cache pool. What you want is cache:yes.

 

Here again, the help in the GUI has some good explanations.

[JorgeB]

Split levels can be confusing, let me give you 2 examples that should help, this is how 2 of my shares are set:

 

(Share / Folder / Files) ps: share is also a folder, the top level one

 

Movies / Movie Title / Movie and related files: split only the top level directory, all files from any movie will be on the same disk

 

TV / Show Name / Season # / Episodes: split only the top two directory levels, all episodes from the same season will be on the same disk, different seasons of the same show can be on different disks, if you wanted all seasons to be on the same disk you'd need to set split level as the Movies share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by johnnie.black

[soulman1949]

Thank you to both, especially jonathanm for the cache answer (I'd misread the manual!) and to johnnie.black for explaining split levels very concisely - for the first time, I understand what I'm doing in this regard!

[superloopy1]

Just been linked to this post and I have to say I'm still a little confused. I have a "media'" share in which I have subfolders 'tv' and 'movies'. Seems there's no way I can have movies all kept together and also TV series to have all episodes kept together within each season using this structure, or is there?

[JorgeB]

I have a "media'" share in which I have subfolders 'tv' and 'movies'. Seems there's no way I can have movies all kept together and also TV series to have all episodes kept together within each season using this structure, or is there?

No, you'd need two different shares, you could move both TV and Movies folders up on level so they would become shares.

 

 

[superloopy1]

Thanks. I thought as much. I originally had separate shares but they weren't being managed well by other programs. I'll just have to manually manage them, but of a pain.

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[nukem492]

On 1/22/2020 at 3:44 AM, johnnie.black said:

you could move both TV and Movies folders up on level so they would become shares.

Can you do this in terminal / mc by moving  /mnt/user/Media/Movies to /mnt/user/Movies ?  That is, you can create shares by simply moving or creating folders inside /mnt/user/ ?  Do you risk screwing up your other data by manipulating files directly inside /mnt/user/, a la the User Share Copy bug?

Edited August 14, 2020 by nukem492

[JorgeB]

3 hours ago, nukem492 said:

Do you risk screwing up your other data by manipulating files directly inside /mnt/user/, a la the User Share Copy bug?

This is only a problem when using user and disk shares at the same time.

 

 

[xxxliqu1dxxx]

On 8/14/2020 at 12:15 AM, nukem492 said:

Can you do this in terminal / mc by moving  /mnt/user/Media/Movies to /mnt/user/Movies ?  That is, you can create shares by simply moving or creating folders inside /mnt/user/ ?  Do you risk screwing up your other data by manipulating files directly inside /mnt/user/, a la the User Share Copy bug?

When I do this, it just seems to move instantly... not sure if it did anything... and when I check on the actual disk, it seems the information it still there... What is the proper way to move from share to share, i.e. moving disks if the split level allows for it, or if the inclusion / exclusion prevents a certain disk from having the files? Would moving from share to share re-trigger these rules?