I'm always baffled by this option. To me, it is logical that if i include a specific disk, all others are excluded, and vice versa. But in the GUI you can include, ánd exclude disks, even the same disks! I can exclude disk2, ánd include disk2. What am i missing? I have 9 disks, and i have a share that i only want to persist on disk1. So what do i do, do i include disk1? Or exclude disk 2 - 9? Or both, and in that case, why? Wouldn't it be more sensible that if i include a disk in the first dropdown list, i can't select it in the other list, and vice versa?

 

Or what does it mean if i include disk1, disk2, and exclude disk4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9? What happens with disk3?

 

What am i not getting here?

Edited May 5, 20188 yr by jowi

The idea is that you should use one of those options - not both.    You should use the one that is most convenient.   

Ok, so i'm overthinking it due to all the possibilities the GUI gives me. I think the GUI could (and should) be much simpler.

13 minutes ago, jowi said:

I think the GUI could (and should) be much simpler.

 

That assumes that the users needs are quite uniform. In reality, there are a large number of usage cases which is the reasons for all the adjustable parameters.

Include means use only the included disks.

 

Exclude means use all disks except the excluded disks.

 

You should never set both Include and Exclude. Not sure what would be the best solution to making this less confusing. If you had 20 disks you wouldn't want to have to tell it to exclude a long list of disks just to get it to use only one or tell it to include a long list of disks just to get to not use only one.

 

Maybe if it disabled exclude when you had any included, or disabled include if you had any excluded. That would probably still confuse some people but at least they wouldn't be able to set both.

Maybe one simplification would be if you had a drop down to select between Include/exclude so you could never have both options set?

It seems to me all use cases would be covered by only having an include / exclude toggle, with new shares defaulting to include, and new disks defaulting to include on all shares. For the GUI, you could have a horizontal row of disk numbers with vertical on/off css radio switches, up being include, down being exclude. You could tell at a glance the status of all your disks for that share, and no ambiguity possible.

 

@bonienl, would it be  too time consuming to mock that up?

 

While we are talking about the share configuration page, I think it would be a good idea to add text something like "Share settings to determine where newly added files will go" or similar verbiage so people don't think split level, allocation method and include/exclude status will move their current files. I know the help text explains it, but I think it's worth it to add the new files clause directly to the title text.

On 5/10/2018 at 7:25 AM, jonathanm said:

It seems to me all use cases would be covered by only having an include / exclude toggle, with new shares defaulting to include, and new disks defaulting to include on all shares. For the GUI, you could have a horizontal row of disk numbers with vertical on/off css radio switches, up being include, down being exclude. You could tell at a glance the status of all your disks for that share, and no ambiguity possible.

 

@bonienl, would it be  too time consuming to mock that up?

Another idea, if a disk is globally excluded, either grey out the radio switch in the off position, or replace it with a "Globally Excluded" graphic that links to the disk exclusion page.