Could someone please explain exactly what happens if you write to a user share in 4.0?

 

I've seen some threads about this for version 3 but am wondering if someone could please provide a consolidated review of how this works and if anything is new/different in 4.0?

 

Thanks!

I just tried it.

 

I wrote to a user share in which the same top level folder is in two different drives.

 

It seemed to work, but I can't find it anywhere on the physical drives, only in the virtual user share.

 

BTW, looking at the main screen yields more info - the drives neverr spun up.  Hmmmm.

 

 

Bill

I just tried it.

 

I wrote to a user share in which the same top level folder is in two different drives.

 

It seemed to work, but I can't find it anywhere on the physical drives, only in the virtual user share.

 

BTW, looking at the main screen yields more info - the drives never spun up.  Hmmmm.

 

 

Bill

you are correct... the user share is created in a file-system that exists only on ram. the "files" there are actually links to the actual files located on /mnt/disk1,/mnt/disk2, etc.  So... you can write to an existing file and it will be written through the link to the actual file. (links on Linux are roughly equivalent to windows shortcuts)

The folders in the "user share" exist only in "ram."  If you were to write a new file to a folder in a user share under any of the releases of unRaid up to version 4.0, it too will exist only in ram, exactly as you described.

 

From what we have been told, the next release of unRaid (version 4.1, not yet released) will allow you to write to a user share and it will create the new file on one of the physical disks.

 

Tom, in an earlier post, had said he was going to "concurrently" release the 4.0 final version of unRaid and the 4.1 version with writable user shares.  I'm not sure of his definition of 'concurrent' but it is probably not the same as mine, since 4.0 has been out for a while now, and we've not seen 4.1 show itself yet. 

 

I have my physical drives shared, but hidden from normal users on the LAN.  I have my user-shares read-only on the LAN.  This prevents any accidental deletion of any of my movies.  When I write a new file to my unRaid sever I type \\tower\disk6  in file explorer and it gives me access to the physical disk, which then spins up.  Until 4.1 is released, you will need to do the same, or... you can share the physical disks as 'visible' on you lan and just browse to them.

 

Joe L.

Currently my user shares only exist on one drive each and writing to them in this instance does work, but apparently only if there is only one option as to physical location.

Currently my user shares only exist on one drive each and writing to them in this instance does work, but apparently only if there is only one option as to physical location.

Interesting...  that means that the "folder" in the user-share is linked to the 'directory' on the physical disk in that situation.  Makes sense to me.

 

Tom's "Share Scan" button must invoke a process that initially creates links to the folders on the unRaid drives, but if a second folder on a different physical drive exists,  and it finds it during its scan, the link to the folder is replaced with an in-memory folder with links to the files on the physical drives.

 

So... we can say in some situations user-shares can be writable... but for many of us, they are not.

 

Joe L.

Joe:

 

Thanks for your explanation from a few days back.  It explains why I had the results I did when I was loading up my Unraid server.

 

Personally, I can't wait for writable user shares.  It was a PITA distributing the content across drives manually. Once it was distributed it worked just fine for accessing as content streams.

 

Best,

 

 

Joe,

 

Another interesting thing is when I had just 2 drives (one top level folder per drive) and the user share was direct to that one folder, i could right click on the mapped drive and select properties and see the size of the drive. Now that I've added another drive so that I have 'movies' on 2 drives, when I right click on the mapped "movies" share and choose properties, I just get a size of 20mb and none free. Possibly the size of the ram disk used to store the links to the actual files.

 

 

Joe,

 

Another interesting thing is when I had just 2 drives (one top level folder per drive) and the user share was direct to that one folder, i could right click on the mapped drive and select properties and see the size of the drive. Now that I've added another drive so that I have 'movies' on 2 drives, when I right click on the mapped "movies" share and choose properties, I just get a size of 20mb and none free. Possibly the size of the ram disk used to store the links to the actual files.

 

 

I'm goinng to guess you are correct. Sounds like it is reporting the size of the ramdisk.