Is it just me or is the Prefer setting writing tot he array first and mover is moving the files to the cache drive, like the reverse of the 'yes' option? I thought this was supposed to be the same as 'only' except that it would write to the array if the cache is full... Am I missing something here? This is the first time I have tried to use this setting so I would like to have some clarification if possible. If this is how it is supposed to be working than it's basically a useless setting, right? Because the description seems to say that it should still be acting like 'only' except for being able to use the array in case of low disk space but it sure as heck is writing to the array first and then mover is moving to the cache disk. The big issue is that I have lots of little baby writes going on all the time, which is what the cache is there for.

 

Maybe I am doing something wrong? Below is basically how I have all my shares set up right now that I want to use the cache.

 

 

For a little bit of background, i just had a USB drive failure so I went and upgraded right to 6.8 but I have been running the older version from my sig since the moment it was release till just a couple days ago.

Nope, it'll write to the cache drive first, and if there's not 100GB free, then it'll write to the array and then move it later.  Except if it's overwriting or modifying an existing file.  How much space is available on the cache?  (And also what is the cache min size set to under Global Share Settings)

Cache size is 1TB. Global settings is set to 200GB, I don't remember setting this manually. The cache at the time had about 500GB or so left on it, I ran mover and now it is about 600GB. I dont know, maybe I am getting these writes from somewhere else? Running smbstats showed only my username I use for my own personal access from my main PC and the nVidia Shield I have that has mounted the server shares using it's own user name. just those two IPs. Thing is, I am running a good deal of docker images right now but some that access often should be running off shares that are set to 'prefer' or 'only'. I am sure to do some more digging but I have to say, I turned off docker entirely and rebooted the server without docker running at all and I was still seeing writes tot he array directly. No idea what could be doing this. Thanks for clarifying the 'prefer' option's function. Ive had phantom network access a few times that needed to be tracked down but never phantom writes to the array that are obviously ignoring my settings.