Newbie here, Just finished setting up my Power Edge T30 and have unraid installed.

 

I have all my disks installed ( 2x8Tb WD Red and 2x4Tb WD Red)

Parity is already synced

Array is started

I have no Cache drive installed as I was unsure If I needed it, plus all my sata ports are full on MB.

 

I'm stuck at creating my shares and what the best settings would be.

 

Each share would have subfolders, such as,  Media would have a Movies and TV shows folder. Then each of those would have another sub folder such as movie name and TV show name. Then TV show name would have another folder for season X, etc.

 

Music would have folder for artist, then another folder for the album it is.

 

Pictures would be be month and year

 

Backup would be for Iphone backups, computer backups, server backups etc.

 

Data would be programs, downloads etc.

 

Do I just create my folders (Media, Pictures, Music, Back Up, Time Machine, Data, etc folders) needed and leave all settings at defaults? Such as High water and auto split any directory? What about free space?

 

I've read a few pages and did some searching of how to setup plex as well, but still a bit confused. I know to use the dock app and not a plugin. Confused about how to set it up and how to point it to see my shares.

 

Thanks for any help. I hoped I explained clearly enough. 

 

At this point, leave everything setup at the defaults for the shares.  Play around a bit with the server, put some files  on the server and see if the basic file (share) structure that you have outlined will meet your needs. With the size of your data drives, you will have a lot of time to figure out split level, free space , and Allocation method.  IF you really want to get started with these parameters, you can find information here:

 

     https://wiki.lime-technology.com/UnRAID_Manual_6#Shares

 

While I do not use Plex, I would use one of the Plex Docker applications rather than a plugin.  If you decide to use a Plex Docker, you should probably get a ssd cache drive.  (Unfortunately a lot of the Docker applications will keep your cache drive spun up constantly and ssd drives tend to be better suited for this type of environment.)   There should be a support thread for the Plex application (If it doesn't have a support thread, I would be looking for one which does!) that you decide on and you can get a lot of information by looking through it. 

Personally, I would put movies and TV in their own shares. I use split level 1 or only split the top level for all the media, movies, TV and music. That way, each Movie directory, each TV show directory and each artist is contained to a single drive. It's a personal preference to keep my media organized. I don't want the movie file on one drive and the metadata files on another drive. I don't want TV episodes for a single show spread over multiple drives.

 

The issue this can cause is that continuing TV shows can attempt to over-fill a disk eventually. It's not a big deal to me. When it has happened I copy a bunch of continuing shows from a full drive to the most free drive I have and that's enough to keep it working for another long time.