Shares Best Practice

[surfshack66]

Is there a best practice for configuring user shares to minimize drives spinning up, etc? Specifically, how should a "downloads" or "media" folder be configured? 

[trurl]

Simple questions often don't have simple answers. It's not because the answers are too hard. It's rather because the questions are too simple.

 

The answers you arrive at will depend on the way you use these particular user shares. Not everyone will use them the same even if they choose the same names for them.

 

Go to the Settings page for one of your user shares and turn on help. Let us know if you have any further questions about what each of the settings do.

[tdallen]

Personal Preference - I feel like a Media folder is too general and prefer Movies, TV Shows, etc.  Why would I want to spin up all the disks where TV Shows are located when I want to watch a movie?  Downloads will generally be on your cache drive, not the array.

[surfshack66]

2 hours ago, tdallen said:

Personal Preference - I feel like a Media folder is too general and prefer Movies, TV Shows, etc.  Why would I want to spin up all the disks where TV Shows are located when I want to watch a movie?  Downloads will generally be on your cache drive, not the array.

 

If Gladiator is on Disk 1 and Sopranos is on Disk 1 and 2, you're saying both disks would spin up when playing Gladiator?

[tdallen]

If you create a "Media" share (well, any share), and you don't use a solution like cachedirs, then when you access the Media share the only way unRAID will have to determine the contents is to spin up all the drives associated with that share.  Unused drives will spin back down after the standard delay.  My personal preference is setup more granular shares - TV Shows, Movies, etc.  And I target certain drives to be associated with each share.  That minimizes the number of drives that need to spin up when a share is accessed.

Edited February 5, 2018 by tdallen

[surfshack66]

4 minutes ago, tdallen said:

If you create a "Media" share (well, any share), and you don't use a solution like cachedirs, then when you access the Media share the only way unRAID will have to determine the contents is to spin up all the drives associated with that share.  Unused drives will spin back down after the standard delay.  My personal preference is setup more granular shares - TV Shows, Movies, etc.  And I target certain drives to be associated with each share.  That minimizes the number of drives that need to spin up when a share is accessed.

 

Interesting.

 

I'd like to implement what you have set up. I have 5 4tb drives. Does the below look correct? Not sure what allocation method to use though.

 

Disk 1 - Movies, split-level 1

Disk 2 - Movies, split-level 1

Disk 3 - TV Shows, split-level 2

Disk 4 - TV Shows, split-level 2

Disk 5 - Other

[surfshack66]

Also, if I have an existing share called "Files", where files reside on multiple Disks, but then I change it to include Disk 5 (in my example), what happens to the files on the other disks? Are they moved to Disk 5?

[trurl]

Default Allocation Method of High Water is a good compromise between distributing your files to all disks in the share without constantly switching disks just because one disk temporarily has more free space than another.

[tdallen]

2 hours ago, surfshack66 said:

Also, if I have an existing share called "Files", where files reside on multiple Disks, but then I change it to include Disk 5 (in my example), what happens to the files on the other disks? Are they moved to Disk 5?

No.  There are a couple of ways you can arrange to move them.  But, simply adding/rearranging the disks in the share settings doesn't automatically cause files to be moved.

[surfshack66]

14 hours ago, tdallen said:

No.  There are a couple of ways you can arrange to move them.  But, simply adding/rearranging the disks in the share settings doesn't automatically cause files to be moved.

 

I see. Thanks.

 

Does the disk/share allocation I mentioned above resemble your configuration?

[tdallen]

I started off my unRAID server with High Watermark and all disks included in all shares.  It's a good setting for a new user to start with, and remains a good setting for users who just like to use their server rather than tinker with it.

 

That said, I came to three conclusions.  One, I actively manage my server - disks aren't going to fill up without my knowing.  Two, I didn't like having files in a share scattered unnecessarily across multiple disks.  Three, while having equal amounts of data smoothly spread across all disks seems appealing, it's actually a pain to manage.

 

So, at the recommendation of some folks here like @SSD I switched over to having shares "include" only the disks I want the data on, and all shares are set to "Fill" each disk (with a nice big minimum free space).  I also use the diskmv/consld8 utilities to move data from one set of disks to another when infrequently needed.  Warning, this is a more advanced approach that requires you to actively manage your server - one disk could fill up while you have space available on others.  But I prefer it so far.

[trurl]

I still use High Water, but what I do is only include a disk in a share as that share needs additional space. Many of my shares are confined to a single disk. Some are on a single disk with other shares. And because of the way they are used they will probably never need more. Other shares got too big for a single disk so I added a disk and included it for the share. So the way I am managing things Allocation Method is probably moot.

[SSD]

Yea, understanding split level and the fact that a disk can be excluded from a user share but still get files based on the split level is important to understand. The included disks only come into play when writing and there is no split level match.

 

For tv shows shares, you can use something like most free. That will result in new TV shows going to the disk with the most free space. But with the split level set properly, new episodes of tv shows are steered to the disks containing that show.

[trurl]

2 hours ago, SSD said:

Yea, understanding split level and the fact that a disk can be excluded from a user share but still get files based on the split level is important to understand. The included disks only come into play when writing and there is no split level match.

 

For tv shows shares, you can use something like most free. That will result in new TV shows going to the disk with the most free space. But with the split level set properly, new episodes of tv shows are steered to the disks containing that show.

 

It's almost like unRAID gives you too many ways to control things.

[SSD]

2 hours ago, trurl said:

 

It's almost like unRAID gives you too many ways to control things.

 

I remember at the time these features were being implemented, there were a lot of problems with DVD files getting split across different disks, which resulted in pauses as the other disk spun up. Tom implemented a lot of different options trying to get the secret sauce (including spin up groups), so we have a lot of options that are somewhat similar.

[surfshack66]

9 hours ago, tdallen said:

I started off my unRAID server with High Watermark and all disks included in all shares.  It's a good setting for a new user to start with, and remains a good setting for users who just like to use their server rather than tinker with it.

 

That said, I came to three conclusions.  One, I actively manage my server - disks aren't going to fill up without my knowing.  Two, I didn't like having files in a share scattered unnecessarily across multiple disks.  Three, while having equal amounts of data smoothly spread across all disks seems appealing, it's actually a pain to manage.

 

So, at the recommendation of some folks here like @SSD I switched over to having shares "include" only the disks I want the data on, and all shares are set to "Fill" each disk (with a nice big minimum free space).  I also use the diskmv/consld8 utilities to move data from one set of disks to another when infrequently needed.  Warning, this is a more advanced approach that requires you to actively manage your server - one disk could fill up while you have space available on others.  But I prefer it so far.

 

Is there a difference if I use windows explorer to transfer files from one share to a newly configured share?

[trurl]

40 minutes ago, surfshack66 said:

Is there a difference if I use windows explorer to transfer files from one share to a newly configured share?

It is more efficient to move things directly on the server instead of moving them across the network and back.

[Polopollo]

Dumb question about granular shares and Plex: Do you setup your Plex docker that has access to /mnt/user ? Else how do you deal with feeding it all your different shares?

[trurl]

1 minute ago, Polopollo said:

Dumb question about granular shares and Plex: Do you setup your Plex docker that has access to /mnt/user ? Else how do you deal with feeding it all your different shares?

Some people do it that way, but of course that gives Plex access to ALL your user shares. Another way is to map specific user shares (Host Path) to different container paths. Do you understand docker volume mapping?

[Polopollo]

1 minute ago, trurl said:

Some people do it that way, but of course that gives Plex access to ALL your user shares. Another way is to map specific user shares (Host Path) to different container paths. Do you understand docker volume mapping?

 

Still new to it, but I think I got the gist of it. So the idea would be to have a mapping such as:

• /tvshows <->  /mnt/user/TvShows/
• /movies  <-> /mnt/user/Movies/

Then in Plex when asked the path to each one, I put the left ones (so "/tvshows" and "/movies"). Right?

 

I had a bad experience with Resilio the other day that did not remember some paths I mounted to it (but the docker image had to be updated), and I still need to sort some things out with it. And my media shares are still messy right now (emptying old external HDDs then i'll sort what I keep or not). But I want to apply the best practices!

[trurl]

17 minutes ago, Polopollo said:

Still new to it, but I think I got the gist of it. So the idea would be to have a mapping such as:

• /tvshows <->  /mnt/user/TvShows/
• /movies  <-> /mnt/user/Movies/

Then in Plex when asked the path to each one, I put the left ones (so "/tvshows" and "/movies"). Right?

 

Looks like you've got it! Don't forget that linux is case sensitive.

 

I know there are a lot of docker users here who don't really get it and have accidentally gotten things to work by following some instructions. Much better if you know how it works and can decide for yourself how you want to use it.

[Bjur]

Hi I'm completely new to Unraid. When I have shares like:

TV shows/show/season 

Movies/movie

I'm thinking of using level 1 split to have movies and show on the same disks. 

Would it make sense to use include disk 1 for movies and disk 2 for shows or should I leave it to Unraid.

Have used some hours to go through it but I still see different options so what would be the best in my situation? 

[JorgeB]

10 hours ago, Bjur said:

Have used some hours to go through it but I still see different options so what would be the best in my situation? 

Some examples here:

https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/59589-solved-v635-advice-please-on-shares-settings/?do=findComment&comment=584558

 

[Bjur]

Yes have already seen this. I'm more interested in what the general recommendation is for "disk include". Should it be leaved to Unraid to split it or would it be best to assign manually? 

Also if I go this route and set disk 1 and 2 for TV Shows and 3+4 for Movies would it still put files in Disk 2 and 4 when 1 and 3 is half full if I use High Water with Disk Include. 

[JorgeB]

45 minutes ago, Bjur said:

Should it be leaved to Unraid to split it or would it be best to assign manually?

That's really up to you and your preference, there's no wrong answer. 

 

46 minutes ago, Bjur said:

Also if I go this route and set disk 1 and 2 for TV Shows and 3+4 for Movies would it still put files in Disk 2 and 4 when 1 and 3 is half full if I use High Water with Disk Include. 

Yes.