Hey all, a newbie here with a simple question: if I have a file that is larger than any single drive in an UnRaid system, what happens? Does the copy operation fail, or is the file split/spanned across multiple drives?

 

Example, if I have sixteen empty 500GB drives in my UnRaid server, and I try to copy a 1TB file to the server, what happens?

 

Thanks!

 

-joe

 

if I have sixteen empty 500GB drives in my UnRaid server, and I try to copy a 1TB file to the server, what happens?

Short answer: You can't copy such file to unRAID.  It has to be able to fit on a single disk. 

You may need to use some tool that can split the file in smaller pieces.

 

Hey all, a newbie here with a simple question: if I have a file that is larger than any single drive in an UnRaid system, what happens? Does the copy operation fail?

Yes, the copy will fail.

I am a little boit confused. I thought a file could span two disks and that was why spin groups and shares were introduced. Or is it the Samba issue where there is only a sigle pipe so all Samba traffic stops while any disk spins up that fathered spin groups and shares?

I am a little boit confused. I thought a file could span two disks and that was why spin groups and shares were introduced. Or is it the Samba issue where there is only a sigle pipe so all Samba traffic stops while any disk spins up that fathered spin groups and shares?

A directory can span multiple disks.  A single file cannot. 

It has nothing to do with SAMBA or any of its limitations.

 

The limitation exists since a file must exist in a single file-system, and each physical disk has its own file-system.

 

Spin-groups were introduced to keep from introducing a delay/pause in the stream of media currently playing when a affiliated disk is spun up, regardless of it is part of the same movie/set of files being played. 

 

User-shares were introduced to logically allow directories to span multiple disks, to make it easier on media players and users looking to organize data that does not all fit on a single disk (When unRAID was first released, the largest disks were 500Gig, and were over $300).

 

Joe L.

Got it.  As usual, Thanks Joe.