My Proof of Concept Box is Built - What Now?

[calvis]

OK, for the past 2 weeks I have been building a 'proof of concept' box based on the budget build.  I have 8 hard drives, but will have another 4 coming in this week.  Now that it is working what do I do with it?  I see Disk1 through Disk7 (All 2TB drives) which can get pretty confusing.  How do you organize all your volumes?  I have 4 TB of media that I need to put on there.  Do you just copy your stuff over the GB network?

 

I am lacking some concrete direction on what I should be doing with the box.  Any ideas?    My plans for box is to store media and make it available to different resources and system backups. 

 

I have all this space but not sure what I should be doing with it.  Any ideas for a good road map?

 

 

 

 

[kizer]

Well I personally did the following.

 

I use Disk Shares and User Shares.

 

User Shares are Read only

Movies

TV

MP3

MISC

 

I use XBMC so I keep my files orginized in a way so they are scanned the way I want them when I want them.

 

Disk Shares are hidden Read/Write

 

disk1 - Movie share disk1 only

ISO - for disk images

720 - lower quality rips

480 - Dvds that have been converted from ISO images

Uploads - Files that I move and haven't put them where I want them

 

disk2 - TV share - All my tv shows go here disk2 only

Shows

- BatttleStar Galactica

--Season 1

---Files

Uploads - Shows that are put here and yet haven't been orginized

 

disk3 - MP3 - disk3 only

A

-Aero Smith

--Pump

B

C

D

E

F

.

.

.

.

.

Z

 

disk4 - MISC disk4 only

this is the drive that I put my various files on

 

Not yet allocated for much

disk5

disk6

 

Of course my collection isn't as large as others, but as my collection grows I will allocated disk5 and disk6 to each share when they are needed.

[jazzysmooth]

I have a single user share (Media) which spans all my drives (6 currently).  My clients map to that share and then underneath I have various folders like:

 

Movies

MP3s

Backups

Pictures

etc...

 

I have the split level set high enough that all final folder contents are written to the same disk.

 

As far as loading the data, I write to the user share across the network.  Many people here like to have more control and write directly to the disk shares.  You can always telnet to the server and move data around at a later date should you change your mind on how you want it laid out.  If you're going to bulk load a lot of data, you may want to unallocate the parity drive and re-add it afterthe bulk load is complete.  Of course this assumes you are copying the data over and have a backup prior to the parity being built.

[nia]

For recorded TV and movies, I have a "PVR" share spanning several disks. This way there is always room to dump films.

 

For music, I have a "Music" share on ONE disk to avoid spinning up more than that drive while playing and to avoid unwanted pauses if e.g. an album was split across disks.

 

For pictures I also have a share "Billeder"[Danish for Pictures] on just one disk to make browsing and management (ACDSee) more fluent.

 

Then also a couple of other shares.

 

Essentially, what you would want is to expose the share names you need to the users even if just using one disk. That will make it transparent in the future if when you change the physical setup.

 

Then you can add disks to those shares or move data around depending on future space needs and HW expansions.

 

[Paak]

I have a set up similar to Kizer.

 

Disk 1 - Movies

Disk 2 - TV Shows

Disk 3 - Music

Disk 4 - Pictures

Disk 5 - Program back ups (various useful programs I've dl from the web so I never have to look for them again IE: vlc, avg restore disk, xbmc live...)

[lionelhutz]

You turn-on user shares and then you go to the share tab and set-up some user shares. A use share can be called something like "Movies" and it will take a directory called "Movies" on each disk and combine the contents into one common network share called "Movies". You can then hide the disk1 to disk8 shares so you don't even see them.

 

One big issue with user shares is to ensure that your data in each directory is kept on the same disk. This can mean fewer drives being spun-up and overall just keeps the disk "clutter" down. This is done using the split level setting. You need to know the directory structure in use to properly set the split level. Another option is to write to the disks directly and read from the shares to avoid these problems.

 

So, the first thing would be create a directory structure of what you would like stored on the server. Then, this is used to set on the user shares.

 

Once the shares are created, then just copy the data over the network to put it on the server. There are other options such as moving disks temporarily into the server but using the network is just easier if you're not in a big rush to get the data there. Hint: unassign the parity drive during this initial move and you'll get a pretty good transfer speed.

 

 

I have the split level set high enough that all final folder contents are written to the same disk.

 

A high split level does not mean that items stay on the same disks. In fact, it allows the complete opposite.

 

Peter

[jazzysmooth]

 

A high split level does not mean that items stay on the same disks. In fact, it allows the complete opposite.

 

Peter

 

My folder structure is pretty shallow, with the exception of MP3s.  In that folder I may have:

 

Media

-MP3s

--Artist

---Album

----CD1

----CD2

 

When my split level was set to 3, I'd occasionally get music icons stored in the same folder structure on a different disk.  Since I cleaned it up and then changed the split level to 5, I've never had it occur again.

 

Per your quote in another thread:

 

The split level is the number of the last folder you want to split.

 

 

So in my case I have:

 

\\tower\media\MP3s\Artist\Album\CD1

---------1-----2-----3-----4-----5

 

Is my thinking all backwards on this?

 

In any case, the problem hasn't reoccurred since I changed it - whether its coincidence or due to the split level change, I'm ok with the results. :-)

[Rajahal]

I use User Shares exclusively.  I have user shares for Movies, Music, Docs, Stand-Up, TV, Backups, Programs, Games, etc.  I use the split level settings and 'include/exclude' disk settings to limit the user shares to specific disks, the point being to keep the maximum amount of disks spun down at all times.

 

I set my Disk Shares to export read/write hidden so that I can still access them if I need to do some administrative stuff (such as clearing all the files off a disk in anticipation of removing it).

 

I also use User Level security to control the permissions for each share.  I have an 'admin' account (passworded) that can read/write to everything.  I also have a read-only guest account (no password) for the HTPC and for guests on my network (friends, family, roommates, etc.)

[lionelhutz]

So in my case I have:

 

\\tower\media\MP3s\Artist\Album\CD1

---------1-----2-----3-----4-----5

 

Is my thinking all backwards on this?

 

In any case, the problem hasn't reoccurred since I changed it - whether its coincidence or due to the split level change, I'm ok with the results. :-)

 

It wasn't the change that fixed anything. The amount of splitting depends on how you fill the server. If it split where you didn't want when using 3 then using 5 would make it worse. Besides, 5 means that the CD1 directory could be put onto multiple disks and I doubt you want that.

 

Peter