February 2, 20197 yr Hi All, I'm a newbie, and I'm in the process of setting up UNRAID on Dell R710. I'm planning to have a single parity drive and a single data drive for now. I believe the filesystem choices are XFS, ReiserFS, etc on the UNRAID side. After setting up the initial data and syncing parity, I'm interested in "mounting" the UNRAID data array (or is it shares?) on a windows 10 desktop PC across the network so that the Windows side can read and write to the array seamlessly. Is this easily doable with UNRAID and SMB? Any pointers on this topic would be useful. I tried googling but I couldn't find the right topic. Background: My overall goal is to have the UNRAID server be the central backup server where multiple clients to store data to. For this, I'm planning to have the windows PC mount the UNRAID array as a network drive, have the PC wake up periodically (save every day) and perform rsync both ways, i.e., the PC would store it's new data to the UNRAID server, and have the PC sync up new data stored in the server from other clients. For this plan to work, I think it would be simpler if I can mount UNRAID on the windows system. I can also try using an ssh client with rsync from the windows side, but I wanted to check the "mounting" option first.... Thanks in advance.
February 2, 20197 yr 3 minutes ago, sibi78 said: Hi All, I'm a newbie, and I'm in the process of setting up UNRAID on Dell R710. I'm planning to have a single parity drive and a single data drive for now. I believe the filesystem choices are XFS, ReiserFS, etc on the UNRAID side. After setting up the initial data and syncing parity, I'm interested in "mounting" the UNRAID data array (or is it shares?) on a windows 10 desktop PC across the network so that the Windows side can read and write to the array seamlessly. Is this easily doable with UNRAID and SMB? Any pointers on this topic would be useful. I tried googling but I couldn't find the right topic. Background: My overall goal is to have the UNRAID server be the central backup server where multiple clients to store data to. For this, I'm planning to have the windows PC mount the UNRAID array as a network drive, have the PC wake up periodically (save every day) and perform rsync both ways, i.e., the PC would store it's new data to the UNRAID server, and have the PC sync up new data stored in the server from other clients. For this plan to work, I think it would be simpler if I can mount UNRAID on the windows system. I can also try using an ssh client with rsync from the windows side, but I wanted to check the "mounting" option first.... Thanks in advance. Its just shares you create under the "shares" tab and connect to them via smb.
February 2, 20197 yr 55 minutes ago, sibi78 said: I'm interested in "mounting" the UNRAID data array (or is it shares?) on a windows 10 desktop PC across the network so that the Windows side can read and write to the array seamlessly That's determined by the SMB Security settings on each unRAID user share. If you export a share as Public, it will show up in Windows File Explorer (assuming you have the right SMB/Security settings on the Windows side, which can be tricky) automatically for all users when you browse your server on the Network. Enable Help on the Share Settings page in unRAID for full details on the security settings. Note: It is good practice to NOT export disk shares.
February 2, 20197 yr Community Expert It probably isn't necessary to map drives to your shares either. I haven't had any need for that in years. Most applications can access things on the network just fine without making it into a drive letter. Possibly there is even some increased malware risk from mapping drives.
February 3, 20197 yr Author Thanks for all the replies! Just curious, if mounting the UNRAID share on Windows is *NOT* recommended, what is the recommended way to transfer data from the Windows side to UNRAID on a continuous basis (I'm not thinking of one-time transfer techniques, but more like continuous backup)? I've seen techniques to mount the windows drive on UNRAID and then transfer files to it from the gui or tools like Krusader. But, I was interested in techniques where the data transfer is initiated on the windows side. May be, rsync + ssh? Others?
February 3, 20197 yr Community Expert All I am saying is there is no need to map an Unraid share (or indeed any network share) to a Windows drive letter. Just browse the network in Windows File Explorer, Windows File Open dialog, whatever. As I said, I haven't mapped a network share to a drive letter in years. Maybe that isn't what you mean by "mount", but I don't know what else you might mean since the word "mount" isn't typically used in Windows.
February 3, 20197 yr Author 10 minutes ago, trurl said: All I am saying is there is no need to map an Unraid share (or indeed any network share) to a Windows drive letter. Just browse the network in Windows File Explorer, Windows File Open dialog, whatever. As I said, I haven't mapped a network share to a drive letter in years. Maybe that isn't what you mean by "mount", but I don't know what else you might mean since the word "mount" isn't typically used in Windows. Got it @trurl, thanks! I had understood some of the comments above that you shouldn't even use the Windows File Explorer to transfer data (with or without a drive letter). That's the reason I was wondering if there are other recommended methods.
February 3, 20197 yr Community Expert 2 minutes ago, sibi78 said: Got it @trurl, thanks! I had understood some of the comments above that you shouldn't even use the Windows File Explorer to transfer data (with or without a drive letter). That's the reason I was wondering if there are other recommended methods. I am not sure which comment you interpreted as saying do not use Windows Explorer? Windows Explorer works fine with Unraid regardless of whether an Unraid Share is mapped to a drive letter or not. I use it all the time with Unraid without having a drive letter mapped.
February 3, 20197 yr 7 minutes ago, sibi78 said: Got it @trurl, thanks! I had understood some of the comments above that you shouldn't even use the Windows File Explorer to transfer data (with or without a drive letter). That's the reason I was wondering if there are other recommended methods. Your unRAID shares will show up in Windows (under Network where your server will appear) just like any other folder in any local drive. You can copy/move/delete files to/from unRAID shares to/from Windows in Windows File Explorer. Edited February 3, 20197 yr by Hoopster
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