Split level confusion!

[opentoe]

Yep, even after all the reading about split-level I still don't know what to make mine. I don't care where the data is saved on the drives. I'm also confused on if I create a usershare do I keep making/creating folders in that share or just keep creating new/more usershares? I've made one usershare, but I want to remove it. Is there any easy way to do that via the Webgui?

 

I want to use the array as how it is suppose to be used. One large drive. And then not care about what is being written where. If I wanted to spend the time and energy on moving files into their folders I would have shared each single disk and managed it take way. I just want to use one usershare and work off of there and have the data copied across to all the mounts. I'm still having a tough time knowing what is the difference between making multiple usershares or creating multiple folders in one usershare. This is holding me back from starting to copy all my data over.

 

Michael

 

[lionelhutz]

You can have multiple shares or one big share. You could use shares such as Movies, TV Shows, Music etc or just one share called Storage for example.

 

Any directory you create at the root of a disk will become a share. Stop the array, turn the user shares off, turn the export disk share to read/write and start the array again. Then, delete any top level directories on the disks. That will get rid of the share. Stop the array and turn the user shares back on and the disk shares back off. Start the array again and you can create the share you want.

 

Set the split level to 999 if you don't care what files go where inside your share.

 

Peter

 

[opentoe]

I set the allocation method to high-water and made the split level 999 but for some reason when I copy data to my user share it just copies files onto the first drive. I have 6 installed. I thought 999 would enable the data to be written across all the shares kind of evenly?

 

 

[Muck]

I set the allocation method to high-water and made the split level 999 but for some reason when I copy data to my user share it just copies files onto the first drive. I have 6 installed. I thought 999 would enable the data to be written across all the shares kind of evenly?

 

 

 

The way I understand it, high-water allocation will write to the disk with the least free space that is still above the "high-water" mark. So if you have multiple disks of the same size, it will write to the first disk and won't move on to the next disk until it fills up half the disk (the high-water mark). Then when all disks are half full, it will repeat and move on to the next disk when the disk is 3/4 full and so on.

 

It sounds like you want to set your allocation to "most free" meaning it will write to whatever disk has the most free space.

 

I would fact check my post though, as I am new to all this. The wiki is a good place to read up on allocation and user shares.

[dgaschk]

Allocation method only applies to the user share for which its selected. It does nothing with disk shares.

[lionelhutz]

High water is an interesting setting that attempts to partially fill disk in turn yet keep a certain amount of empty space on each disk. Starting with equal sized 2T drives, high water will fill the first disk until <1T of space remains then move to the next disk. Once all disks have <1T of space then it will start over and fill each again until <500gig of space remains on each.

 

Use most free if you want to fill each disk equally.

 

You also have to know what method you are using to fill the drives. Some copy programs will first create the directory structure and then fill it. Others will also create empty files and then fill those. It's quite possible you could end up with way <1T free on each disk before unRAID moves to the next disk. It's also possible you could end up with a bunch of emty directories on each disk as unRAID first allows them to be created on say disk1 and then re-creates them on disk2 to allow the files to go there.

 

Peter

[opentoe]

Ok, now I'm more confused than when I started.

 

I'm not using disk shares. I want to utilize user shares so when I access that share it is seeing the whole drive pool. I created several user shares, I just indicated:

Share Name: Movies

Allocation Method: High-water

Min Free Space: left this blank

Split level: 999

Included: blank

Excluded: blank

 

Right now whenever my computer writes to that share it is just writing to disk 1. All I want is unRAID to handle the writes/reads so I don't have to spend time on managing thousands of files. I would like the entire array to be used (written to) when I do copy data to it. Or at least all the drives being utilizied the same to some degree. Would I need to change my allocation method to Most-Free or Fill-up to get that kind of action? Hopefully I'll be able to get this all set tonight before I start copying more and more data to the share. Experts, please be nice to me! I really do appreciate all the help.

 

 

[Joe L.]

You need to set min-free to a size about double that of the largest size file to be transferred. It is in kb , so something like

800000

might be a good value.

[opentoe]

If I do that, what will happen differently? I move files from 1MB to 40GB in size.

[lionelhutz]

Most Free will spread the data out evenly to each drive. High Water will partly fill each drive before moving to the next one. It's working right from what you are describing.

 

Peter

[dgaschk]

If I do that, what will happen differently? I move files from 1MB to 40GB in size.

 

You must set the free space or you will have failures when you try to copy to an almost empty disk. The files system needs free space in order to operate efficiently. It should be set to at least twice the size of the largest file you will ever copy to the share. When free space drops below the setting the share will no longer write to the disk. You can top off the disks by manually copying files to it but performance may suffer.

[opentoe]

I did finally set my usershares with a free space to 80GB. Since I do sometimes copy 40GB bluray movie files.

[lionelhutz]

Geeze. The free space is required when using the Fill-Up allocation method. True to it's name, the Fill-Up allocation method attempts to fill each drive before moving to the next one. If you don't have a minimum free space then you will run out of space. Say that disk1 fills until there is 35gig free. You then try to write a 40gig file. unRAID, having no knowledge of the final file size, will attempt to keep using disk1 and begin writing the file. 35gig into the write the disk1 is full and the copy fails. You keep trying and the problem keeps repeating so you come here and complain about how unRAID won't start to use disk2. If you had put in 80gig then unRAID would start using disk2 by the time there was 35gig free on disk1.

 

If you use Most Free or High Water then the disks keep filling partially. You'll start to have issues as all disks come close to being full. The Min Free Space setting can help at this time, but it's likely you will have to use disk shares or just get another disk to keep placing your files via user shares.

 

Peter