Unraid won't write to one disk

[BadJanitor]

Hello Everyone,

 

I'm a new UnRAID user and I've stumbled into an issue that I can't seem to figure out.  I just created a new array with 3 data disks (parity will be added later) and setup a share.  When I copy data over to the share, UnRAID will only write data to 2 of the data disks and not the third. 

 

I feel like I have a solid understanding of split levels and the allocation methods, and I'm confident they aren't at play here.  To be positive, I've also adjusted them to split level 1 and most-free, but it had no effect.  I've also tried excluding the two working disks in an attempt to force writes to the third, but it seems to go ignored.

 

The hard drive in question just came out of a working system, and I also did a full pre-clear on it (which passed) so I'm pretty confident it is good.

 

I'm not sure what else I can try or what other information I can provide, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here.  Diagnostics and a screenshot attached.

 

Thanks in advance.

krieger-diagnostics-20190508-0918.zip

[trurl]

For some reason, you don't have a config/share.cfg file in those diagnostics. I don't know if this is normal or not for a new install. I wanted to check it to make sure disk3 wasn't excluded from user shares.

 

Go to Settings - Global Share Settings and post a screenshot.

[itimpi]

You seem to have quite restrictive split levels on your shares.  Since Split Level wins if there is conventions with Allocation method for selecting a disk can you give examples of the path for some shares that are not going to the disks you expect?

[BadJanitor]

@trurl Attached is the screenshot you requested.

 

@itimpi The more I play with this, the more unsure I am about my split level setup. 

 

Here is my share and folder structure:

 

Share > Movies > Movie Folder > Movie Files

 

I currently have the split level set to "Split only the top two levels", with the assumption that each individual movie folder (and files within) would be restricted to a single disk.  This follows the examples I found on the wiki and on the forum, however, I don't seem to get the behavior I want until I set it to level 3. 

 

Can you please sanity check me?

 

Thanks

[itimpi]

If ‘’Share’ is the actual name of a share then it counts as level 1, and with your example ‘Share’ and ‘Movies’ can exist on multiple disks, but subsequent levels are constrained to the disk on which they first get created.   From your description I am surprised that Split Level 2 is not correct (assuming the path you gave is correct).   If you left out an element of the path it would explain the behavior you seem to be seeing, or if ‘share’ is not the actual share name but a folder within a share.

[BadJanitor]

Yes, 'Share' represents the actual share, named "Media" in my case.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by BadJanitor
Removed confusing reference to the wiki

[itimpi]

I am still a little confused?     In the path you gave 'Movies' equates to level 2 which equates to the 'SD/HD Movies' type folders.  This means each Movie folder remains on the disk where it is created which is what I thought you wanted?

[BadJanitor]

You are correct.  I do want each movie folder on the disk where it was created, but I don't want ALL of my movie folders on a single disk, which is what was happening at level 2.

[itimpi]

11 minutes ago, BadJanitor said:

You are correct.  I do want each movie folder on the disk where it was created, but I don't want ALL of my movie folders on a single disk, which is what was happening at level 2.

But your example had Movies at level 2, so that can exist on multiple disks.     It is only folders under Movies that are constrained to a single disk where they first get created.

[trurl]

Personally, I've never bothered with split levels. If you set all User Shares to High-water allocation (the default for a good reason), it is likely that files that belong together will stay together anyway. The only consequence if some files are split is it has to spin another disk.

 

Since you set them to Most-Free trying to diagnose this problem, I recommend changing them back to the default High-water. I also noticed you had set a user share to exclude the other disks to try to get them to use the other disk. You should get rid of those excludes too.

 

[BadJanitor]

Yeah I definitely changed it back to High Water and removed the disk exclusions.  I think I'm also going to split my Media share apart into more specific ones so I can get more granular if needed, or just remove the split levels altogether, because as you mentioned, it's probably not worth the effort.

 

Since work is slow today though, and since I'm a visual person, I made a quick diagram showing what I'm trying to accomplish in the example above. It's basically the same example as in the manual, but including the disks.  Can you verify whether I would need split level 2 or 3 configured to accomplish this? 

 

Thanks again.

 

[plttn]

I'd advise against doing it that way, because eventually if you get to the point where you have a long running Series, you won't actually be able to fit it onto that disk, and it won't expand it to another disk. 

 

Doing a TV share and a Movies share is probably safer, with the movies set to split "top level only", and the TV show at "split only top 2 levels"

 

[BadJanitor]

Yeah I will likely move to separate shares down the road so that I can have the level of control that you mentioned. 

 

I still fail to understand why my initial setting of "split top two levels" was restricting all of my movies to go to a single disk using the structure in the diagram above.  I guess I'll have to test it out again when I recreate my shares and see if I can recreate it.