Hey guys, going to start dumping all my movies and stuff on to my array.  Quick question about setting up the user shares.   I have multiple hard drives that i need to copy and they are set up like this:

 

HD Movies

Bluray Movies

3d Bluray Movies

4k Movies

 

Should i just create one user share called media and drop all the directories in there?  or should i create a HD Movies share, a Bluray Movies share, etc? 

Also, when i copy the files, i paste them right into the user shares right? 

 

if anyone can help, would really like to start moving files

This is one of those questions where there is not necessarily a simple answer!   The single ‘media’ share approach has the advantage of simplicity but there are a number of things to consider:

• Do you want the same security on all the folders as security is applied at the Share Level.    Probably you do in this case but that is not always the case.
• What control do you want over which disk individual files end up on?  Some people do not care and let unraid place them as it wants, but others want more control.   Individual shares can be limited to specific drives.  Also by using the ‘Split Level’ setting on Shares you can control at what level splitting folders across disks must stop happening.   Here you may have different requirements for different media types.

If you are not sure then just be aware that if you later change your mind it will be up to you to manually move files to specific locations.  unRAID will not do that automatically for existing files - only for new ones.

thanks for the detailed response, exactly what I was looking for. 

 

the other thing is all these directories are already on all my data disks. if I now say want all HD movies on disk 1, it will be hard to move them as I only have one spare. to swap files to.  

Edited September 5, 20186 yr by xman111

As a general rule of thumb, I like to leave enough free space across the entire array to totally empty my largest drive if needed. So, if my largest drive is an 8TB, I upgrade or add a drive when I have less than 8TB of free space on all my drives together.

 

That way I can move things around if I wish.

that makes a lot of sense.