I'm aware that one of the strengths of unRAID (and RAID4 for that matter) is the LACK of stripping data, in minimizing data loss. Having said that, it would be nice to have minimal amount of mount points for, say, a media library, esp. in the case if your media front end/device is limited to a single mount directory. Hence something like LVM (note: I'm not a Linux guru, I'm only conscious of this because a friend familiar with Unix/linux suggested this as a viable option so I post it as a qualified request), which is stable code, and reversable in principle. Are there other means of at least temporarily "joining" directories/drives into logical partitions, aside from stripping and LVM? perhaps a pseudo-LVM of somesort?

 

Thanks,

Alex

You can get much of the functionality you are looking for by creating a single folder ( a directory under Linux ) and then placing in it symbolic links to the other disks in your unRaid array.   Then, you can mount the one disk with that folder and get to all your content via a single "drive letter" under windows.

 

cd /mnt/disk1 
mkdir disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk1 disks
ln -s /mnt/disk2 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk3 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk4 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk5 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk6 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk7 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk8 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk9 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk10 disks 
ln -s /mnt/disk11 disks 

 

 

Now, a listing of the disk1 drive from a windows based machine will show a sub-folder named disks, and in it will be sub-folders for disk1, 2,3, 4, etc.

 

This might make it a lot easier for some of the media software as it will only need to deal with one drive letter in windows (the drive letter for disk1 can get to all the data on all the data drives through the sub-folder).

 

Joe L. 

   

 

You are a clever guy Joe 

 

I would add that you need to add those lines to the end of your 'go' script in the Flash (for release 1.050930, this is in the root directory of the Flash share, for all later revisions it's in the /system/current directory).

You can get much of the functionality you are looking for by creating a single folder ( a directory under Linux ) and then placing in it symbolic links to the other disks in your unRaid array.  Then, you can mount the one disk with that folder and get to all your content via a single "drive letter" under windows.

 

Can this single drive be used for writing to the array as well as reading?  If so, how are files allocated to each disk when writing?  Will each disk be used in order until it is full?

 

 

Tom,

 

Actually, unless you delete the new directory or symbolic links, they will still be there after a reboot.  You need only type those commands I gave once.  The new folder and the symbolic links are on /mnt/disk1 and protected by the unRaid array  They should survive almost anything except an explicit "rm" command.

 

So...  no need for any new lines in the "go" script.

 

What would be nice would be a way to have a user defined "SMB" share point so that /disk1/disks would be shared out on the LAN as its own share point.  

 

Is there a way to create a new SMB share point with a few lines in the "go" script.  If there was, it might ease a lot of folks interface to applications.  Checkboxes to "not" share specific disks on the LAN might also add to the flexibility in security once we get that far.

 

Joe L.

You can get much of the functionality you are looking for by creating a single folder ( a directory under Linux ) and then placing in it symbolic links to the other disks in your unRaid array.   Then, you can mount the one disk with that folder and get to all your content via a single "drive letter" under windows.

 

Can this single drive be used for writing to the array as well as reading?  If so, how are files allocated to each disk when writing?  Will each disk be used in order until it is full?

 

 

Yes, you can write to each of the sub-folders the exact same way as writing to the physical disk.  Unix has had the concept of links to files pretty much forever (30 years or more)  Symbolic links across drives are a bit newer, but they too have been around for years.

 

Each sub-folder in this new "disks" folder still represents a physical disk, and its own storage... so you can fill each in turn under your control. You cannot "span" disks with a single file.   So if you have two disks each with 2Gig free space you cannot create a new 4Gig file.  You can create two 2Gig files, one on each physical disk.  In other words, you can run out of space in one sub-folder (one physical disk) and still have space in other sub-folders (other physical disks)

 

Joe L.

 

Each sub-folder in this new "disks" folder still represents a physical disk, and its own storage... so you can fill each in turn under your control. You cannot "span" disks with a single file.  So if you have two disks each with 2Gig free space you cannot create a new 4Gig file.  You can create two 2Gig files, one on each physical disk.  In other words, you can run out of space in one sub-folder (one physical disk) and still have space in other sub-folders (other physical disks)

 

Joe L.

 

 

Joe,

 

That's an elegant and simple solution. Is there some additional script magic that can accomplish the following:

 

1. Embed two tiered symbolically linked directories, such as: a master "media" folder/directory with say an embedded symbolic "music" (composed of 3 symbolically linked physical drives) and "video" (composed of 6 symbolically linked physical drives) directories in it.

 

2. Automatically, if you will, move to the next space available physical drive, in the symbolically linked directory when dropping a file on the symbolic directory/mount.

 

2.a Preclude an application folder/subdir (say a ripped DVD's files) to be spanned over two physical drives if the above is possible.

 

I know I'm asking for an arm and a leg, but if these things are do-able, I for one will not miss a unified directory, afforded by LVM and alike.

 

Regards,

Alex

Joe,

 

That's an elegant and simple solution. Is there some additional script magic that can accomplish the following:

 

1. Embed two tiered symbolically linked directories, such as: a master "media" folder/directory with say an embedded symbolic "music" (composed of 3 symbolically linked physical drives) and "video" (composed of 6 symbolically linked physical drives) directories in it?

 

2. Automatically, if you will, move to the next space available physical drive, in the symbolically linked directory when dropping a file on it?

 

2.a Preclude an application folder/subdir (say a ripped DVD's files) to be spanned over two physical drives if the above is possible?

 

I know I'm asking for an arm and a leg, but if these things are do-able, I for one will not miss a unified directory, afforded by LVM and alike.

 

Regards,

Alex