November 2, 201015 yr I'm working on getting my unraid server going and would like to make sure i set my split levels correctly before I start transferring. Off the bat I have 3 2TB drives (1 of the 3 parity) Here's 3 shares I'm setting up initially: Share 1: Movies DVD movie A movie B etc.... Bluray Movie A Movie B etc.... DVD's are .iso's and bluray's are .mkv's. I set the split at 2 Share 2: TV Shows Series Name Season Episode Files are .avi's. Set the split at 3 Share 3: Music Genre Artist Album Song Set the split at 3
November 2, 201015 yr You need to tell us what you want to reside on multiple drives and what you want to stay on a single drive. Also, is "movie A" a file or a directory? Peter
November 2, 201015 yr Author I think that's kinda the part where I get confused. All I'm looking for is smooth seamless playback of my files and for them to show up in that folder structure when I click on the appropriate folder in the windows network. the example of "movie a" would be a file. Either an .iso or .mkv
November 3, 201015 yr Share 1 - the movie is a single file so it doesn't really matter. 2 allows all disks to be used. Share 2 - each season can be on a different disk but the whole season will stay together. Share 3 - each album will stay on a single disk. I don't see a problem with this. If you don't care what is stored where then it doesn't really matter. A high split level will allow you to fill all the disks. The issue some people have with this method of storage is that they don't know what files are stored where. In other words, many people very much like to keep their files organized on the server. Also, if you had a disk rip (as in the contents are just pulled off the disk and stored as say vob files) then you might want to keep all that content together so it's on a single drive. As another consideration, most people have a relatively small music collections that will easily fit onto a single disk so it doesn't make sense to spread it out amoung a number of disks. I personally keep my music share limited to a single disk. Peter
November 3, 201015 yr Share 1 - the movie is a single file so it doesn't really matter. 2 allows all disks to be used. Share 2 - each season can be on a different disk but the whole season will stay together. Share 3 - each artist will stay on a single disk. I agree with this except for Share 3. If you set split level to 3 then each album would stay together but different albums from the same artist could be on different disks. All I'm looking for is smooth seamless playback of my files and for them to show up in that folder structure when I click on the appropriate folder in the windows network.For smooth seamless playback keep all the files you need for playing back your media on a single disk. For a movie all the files for that specific movie need to be on the same disk. If you're using .mkv or .iso this won't be a problem for you at all. If you use VOBs then it will. For a TV show all the files for a single episode need to be on the same disk. With music it won't really matter since each song will be its own file but I recommend that you keep all the songs from an album on the same disk. The split level setting won't affect how the files are displayed in windows explorer when you navigate to the share folder (Movies, TV Show, Music).
November 3, 201015 yr I agree with this except for Share 3. If you set split level to 3 then each album would stay together but different albums from the same artist could be on different disks. Correct, I answered too quickly and didn't write what I was thinking.
December 10, 201015 yr ... Share 1: Movies DVD movie A movie B etc.... Bluray Movie A Movie B etc.... DVD's are .iso's and bluray's are .mkv's. I set the split at 2 Share 1 - the movie is a single file so it doesn't really matter. 2 allows all disks to be used. Not trying to keep beating a dead horse, but the second comment about the Movies share confused me. Lets just say each movie is video_ts so it's a directory instead of a single file. Setting the split level at two allows the DVD directory to span over all drives but keeps each movie directory intact. So, if I had two drives fail, I would lose whole movies instead of pieces of a bunch of movies, correct?
December 10, 201015 yr The OP said that "movie A" is a single movie file. From that, I assumed each and all of them would be single files. So, the folder structure would stop at DVD and the DVD folder would just hold a bunch of movie files, with a single file for each movie. In this case, the split level =2 allows the DVD and Bluray directories to appear on all disks and for all disks to equally share in the task of storing these files. However, he could use split level = 999 and it would make no difference. You're now asking about a case where each movie is stored in a directory called "movie A" with a number of files stored in that directory. The split level setting matters for this case if you want to keep the files for each movie on a single disk. Level 2 should still work and that would limit each movie directory to a single disk. There are always users who simply don't care that the files go wherever and for those users a higher split level would be acceptable. Peter
December 10, 201015 yr The OP said that "movie A" is a single movie file. From that, I assumed each and all of them would be single files. So, the folder structure would stop at DVD and the DVD folder would just hold a bunch of movie files, with a single file for each movie. In this case, the split level =2 allows the DVD and Bluray directories to appear on all disks and for all disks to equally share in the task of storing these files. However, he could use split level = 999 and it would make no difference. You're now asking about a case where each movie is stored in a directory called "movie A" with a number of files stored in that directory. The split level setting matters for this case if you want to keep the files for each movie on a single disk. Level 2 should still work and that would limit each movie directory to a single disk. There are always users who simply don't care that the files go wherever and for those users a higher split level would be acceptable. Peter Thanks Peter. I want to make sure each movie stays together because in worse case senario of losing multiple disks. I rather loose a whole movie than menus from a bunch of movies and have to go through all my movies and figure out which ones are ruined. Split Level 2 it is .
December 10, 201015 yr ^^ The other advantage is that you'll avoid any pauses during playback because the whole movie will be confined to a single disk.
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