When I write to my array, I like to use Disk Shares (e.g. disk1, disk2, ...) rather than user shares (e.g. Music, Videos, ...).  There are two reasons: 1) I make my user shares read only so that nobody accidentally messes up the content and 2) when user shares span more than one drive, I like the directories to be in alphabetical order (for example, music would have a-p on disk6 and q-z on disk7.

 

I just installed a cache drive and found that when I wrote to a disk share, it writes directly rather than using the cache.  In searching, I found that this is normal -- the cache drive normally is only used for user shares.

 

Is there any way for me to configure the cache drive to work when writing to disk shares?

No.

 

It would not make sense anyway as the decision made by mover when run later about which drive to move files onto in the array would be based on the User Share it belongs to as there is nothing stored with cache drive files to indicate their final destination on the array drives.

 

Regarding reason 2) if you have your music organised into letters (e.g. A, B, etc) for the top level then you can control which drive items end up with by setting a Split Level of 0 on a User Share.    With level 0 you have to manually create the top level folder allowed on each drive but it does give you control over the drive even when using User Shares.   If you want a letter split across two drives then simply create the top level folder on the allowed drives and let the Allocation method handle the split at the next level.    This is how I have all my media organised so I know which drive(s) individual items are allowed to use even when working at the User Share Level with shares that can span many drives.

Thanks very much for your response and idea re: organizing user shares -- very helpful!