Newbie here, just started a few days ago. Tried searching the forums and manual but couldn't find any explanation on what it does. I only found the word on a release note.

 

Thanks for the help 

Fill-up is a disk allocation method (one of three).  If you have 'fill-up' selected for a user share, then unRAID will place all new data onto a single disk (the disk with the lowest number, I believe) until that disk is full.

 

For example, say you have a 3 disk server like below:

 

parity - 1+ TB (doesn't really matter for this example)

disk1 - total capacity: 500 GB, free space: 20 GB

disk2 - total capacity: 1 TB, free space: 750 GB

 

Say you have a user share titled 'Movies' that spans both disk1 and disk2 and you have this share set to 'fill-up'.  You transfer an 8 GB HD movie from your desktop computer to the unRAID server.  Even though disk2 has the most free space, unRAID will place this 8 GB file on disk1 because it is trying to fill up the disk with the smallest disk number.  unRAID will continue placing files on disk1 until it is completely full.  It will then switch to preferring disk2.

 

Say instead you transfer a 60 GB BluRay ISO to the server.  unRAID will place the file on disk2 because there isn't enough free space on disk1, even though you have 'fill-up' selected.

 

So if you have a user share that spans 20 disks, unRAID will fill them up sequentially until all disks are full.

 

Thanks very much for the fast reply. Will it erase/damage my files if I changed the allocation method from highwater ( chose highwater when I still use the free version but have since moved to pro ) to fill-up? Wanted to switch because I see couple of my drives have some free space left over that isn't being used when I copy/transfer files to the server but would like to make sure I'm doing it safely.

 

Thanks again for the help

No. The configuration item only affects future transfers. It does not affect anything currently on the disks.

Right.  However, High-Water has it's own merits.  Here's a very simplified overview of the three allocation methods:

 

Fill-Up's goal is to fill every disk to the brim in sequential order, maximizing the number of both full and empty disks.  This method is good for data archival (meaning one write, very few reads).

 

Most Free simply chooses the disk with the most free space.  This method's goal is to spread out the server's total amount of free space across every disk.  This method is a good choice if you wish to fill your disks relatively evenly (keep in mind that this method favors larger disks over smaller ones).  This method may also be appropriate if you deal with a lot of very large files (such as 60 GB BluRay images) and you need to make sure that you always have enough free space on a single disk to accommodate a new one.

 

High Water's goal is to minimize the number of disks spinning at any given time and therefore maximize the energy savings of the server.  It accomplishes this by taking into account a disk's relative free space (as a percentage of the disk's capacity) instead of a disk's absolute free space.  This method is best for data that is used often (meaning frequent writes and frequent reads).

 

Personally, I use High Water because I don't care about how my data is organized across the disks, but I do care about making my server as efficient as possible.

So what would I do if I want all my music on one drive, photos on a second drive and movies on the rest of the drives?

For your music share, use the included and excluded disks options to restrict it to only one disk (for example, include disk1, exclude the rest).  In this case it won't matter what allocation method you have chosen since it will never be used.

 

Do the same for your photos share. (We'll call this one disk2, for example).

 

For your movies share you will do a similar thing.  Set your movies share to exclude disk1 and disk2 (your music and photos disks) and to include the rest.  Then choose which allocation method you want to use.  If you watch movies often (or even just browse the titles often), I would recommend High Water.  If you archive movies but don't watch them or browse them often, then Fill Up is fine.  I can't think of a good reason to ever use Most Free except for the special case of huge individual files (such as BluRay images).

Great, thanks

Utilize disk shares and manually control where they go.

 

Or use 3 separate shares that are isolated to the different drives via 'include disk' settings.

Utilize disk shares and manually control where they go.

 

Or use 3 separate shares that are isolated to the different drives via 'include disk' settings.

 

I must not understand something, nothing new

You say manually control where they go, how else would I do this?  I set up a share called "music" and transferred all my music there, how else could I do this?

To use the "disk" shares, enable the export of "disk" shares, then instead of writing to the \\tower\Music share, you would write to \\tower\disk1\Music

It is guaranteed to be on disk1.  It will appear in the \\tower\Music share automatically.

 

Joe L.

So the first example \\tower\music is not guaranteed to be on disk1 but the second example it is?

 

Interesting, so much to learn and so much fun

 

Thanks again

There's two ways you can guarantee that '\\tower\music\' is only on disk 1. You'd need to set the values in the music share settings section, either setting included to be disk 1, or setting excluded to be all the other disks. If you dont have included or excluded settings setup then it's allowed to pick any disk according to the allocation scheme and split level you selected (most free, high-water, fill-up).

 

When you write directly to any of the disks (\\tower\disk1\music), it bypasses any allocation schemes and writes it exactly where you tell it to (disk1).

 

 

Ok, got it.  I did include and exclude the disks so I am good.

 

Thanks

Yeah you have to remember there are

Disk Shares

\disk1, \disk2, disk3 ...............

 

User shares

\\movie\