Hellooo,

 

I recently jumped over to unraid from a normal desktop installation. I got my shares setup and moved my data in it.

Could anyone tell me whats the best practice with user folders? I had my folder on the D:\ disk in windows. Should i replace the path within windows on the desktop/documents etc folders? Or is symlinking better. Cons/pros please

I keep my live documents on the desktop and back them up to unRAID.

 

Do you have a backup plan?

You don't want to backup things manually right? As of we living in 2017 and a little bit of a system engineer, that saves a lot to the desktop you just want you're backup things automatically right? So whenever you're shit goes wrong, you can reinstall windows. These days with a fast computer it is 1h work of reinstall include apps etc.. to go on further. In this case all user folder directions are on a other partition than Windows itself.

 

Generally my backups runs once a day to a paying cloud service called Max Remote (which is very good).
Meaning that every file created after the backup is gone when you have bsod and need to reinstall your system.

Still I like to have my desktop etc on my old D:\ that now is with Unraid a share @ \\tower\data. This so all important data (scripts edited websites etc). is on the D disk written directly instead of the c:\ disk that can bsod.

Edited September 2, 20178 yr by Thomas van Dalen

I don't have any data on C: either. My desktop has 2 other SSDs for data. I get better performance that way. My backups to unRAID are all automatic, with additional automatic backup offsite. And I've never needed to reinstall Windows and all my applications anyway. I little troubleshooting can usually solve most problems. I have restored an image of my C: drive before because it failed. That image was created and is updated automatically and stored on unRAID.

 

Most applications these days are able to browse a network path so it is seldom necessary to map a drive or create any sort of link. In fact, mapped drives are generally considered a security risk.

 

The only reason I brought up backups is because many new users seem to think unRAID parity will save their data and so don't bother with backups.

cool, but where do you store the desktop / localdocs etc... on  the c drive?

2 hours ago, trurl said:

I don't have any data on C: either. My desktop has 2 other SSDs for data.

 

You store them wherever you want them.

 

My desktop machine has 2 local drives, an SSD for the OS & app install and a spinner for local data. I use SyncBackFree to backup "My Documents" to my unRAID box, which then makes an off-site backup automatically using CrashPlan.

 

However, I keep all my family photos on an unRAID share called "Photos" (creative, right? ), my movies on an unRAID share called "Movies", TV shows on unRAID in "TV", oh, and the backups go to an unRAID share called "Backups". So I have a mixed-use setup. The other members of the family all access those unRAID shares to browse/store photos and watch movies/tv shows, but each individual machine keeps its documents locally, but backs up to that "Backups" share.

 

If you want to, you can (assuming Windows, here) redirect your "My Documents" folder to a location on your unRAID box, and every application on your desktop machine will, by default, automatically store things on your server, with backups running appropriately from there.

 

I don't think there's any explicit "best practice" for where you keep your data other than "more than one place because hard drives do fail". When I'm working in Photoshop, I will sometimes copy the pictures to my local machine because the network lag is a bit too much. I always copy everything locally when I'm working in Adobe Premiere to make a video because the network lag is always too much. When I'm done with a video, I'll copy everything back to the server for long-term storage and backup.

If you want to, you can (assuming Windows, here) redirect your "My Documents" folder to a location on your unRAID box, and every application on your desktop machine will, by default, automatically store things on your server, with backups running appropriately from there.

 

Done that option indeed like my old setup. And run a clcoud backup to backups those shares.

 

Thank you all for advice