Finnaly the 20+ Hour Parity Drive finshed.. I still have warnings that shares are unprotected? All warnings seem to be things using the cache drive?

[questionbot]

Any idea why these shares still show as unprotected? and, How would I fix this?

 

 

The Parity Drive creation worked as far as I know?

 

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

 

PS - I just want to say the community has been very helpful... I think between them and SpaceInvader I am starting to get the hang of this.. I hope my constant questions will turn into heloping others soon!

Edited September 13, 2020 by questionbot

[JonathanM]

38 minutes ago, questionbot said:

Any idea why these shares still show as unprotected? and, How would I fix this?

You have a single cache drive, which means any files there have no redundancy. If you add another 250GB drive in the default RAID1 the notification will change to protected.

 

However... I personally would rather see you set up and use real backup for those files, not simply disk redundancy. CA appdata backup, and backing up any VM's would be a better use of resources.

[questionbot]

Ok.. so I made a shafre called VIDEOS, that I plan to stream plex from and also download to... this is also showing that as I put "prtefer cache".. as I understand it it will use the cache and then in the background move the files to the raid.. is that correct and things in the raid are protected?, while the cache isn't?

 

 

I copied some files .... but if I try and copy more then 185GB it says there is not enough space.... so why is that happening.. I thought it sorta "passed through" the cache as it filled?

 

 

Should I change the videos path to "no" for used cache pool? If I do what about the files I already copied... when I look at the disks there are no directories on the array.. apart from a few defaults ?

Edited September 13, 2020 by questionbot

[JonathanM]

11 minutes ago, questionbot said:

this is also showing that as I put "prtefer cache".. as I understand it it will use the cache and then in the background move the files to the raid..

read the help text in the GUI, hover your mouse over the use cache pool and click on the question mark.

 

post back if you need more.

[questionbot]

I deleted the share and remade it with the setting set to NO... it now seems to show the full raid as available space.. but the directory is only on disk 1... I figure I copy everything across then change it to prefer-cache?

 

Like do I need to make the root directory (in this case "videos") on every disk including the cache disk?

 

Quote

"Prefer indicates that all new files and subdirectories should be written to the Cache disk/pool, provided enough free space exists on the Cache disk/pool. If there is insufficient space on the Cache disk/pool, then new files and directories are created on the array. When the mover is invoked, files and subdirectories are transferred off the array and onto the Cache disk/pool."

 

Yeah, that is what I expected to happen.. but I couldn't copy the files. It said there was an error as it was out of space when I tried to copy a 4TB directory...

 

I assumed it would just copy it to the array if it was out of space?

Edited September 13, 2020 by questionbot

[JonathanM]

21 minutes ago, questionbot said:

"prtefer cache".. as I understand it it will use the cache and then in the background move the files to the raid..

 

5 minutes ago, questionbot said:

When the mover is invoked, files and subdirectories are transferred off the array and onto the Cache disk/pool."

 

[questionbot]

I'm sorry I do not understand what that means  "mover is invoked".... also this sounds backwards.. "transferred off the array and onto the Cache disk/pool." ... isn't that saying it will copy files to the cache, not off it?

 

My cache is 250GB SSD... but I have TBs of data to put on the server? My understanding was I make the share as "prefer cache" and simply copy to it... and as it copies if it fills up, it then moves to storing on the array, and at some point it moves the rest of the data off the cache, that is is sorta always free? Basically I wanted to store my data on the array, but if I download anything new it first goes to the cache with the better disk speeds and is then moved to the array.

[JonathanM]

14 minutes ago, questionbot said:

I'm sorry I do not understand what that means  "mover is invoked".... also this sounds backwards.. "transferred off the array and onto the Cache disk/pool." ... isn't that saying it will copy files to the cache, not off it?

Read the descriptions on the rest of the options.

[questionbot]

17 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Read the descriptions on the rest of the options.

Again... I'm sorry I realise it must be frustrating to help someone failing at such basic understandings, but please assume I have read all the ? things and still do not understand what is going on...

 

Quote

"Yes indicates that all new files and subdirectories should be written to the Cache disk/pool, provided enough free space exists on the Cache disk/pool. If there is insufficient space on the Cache disk/pool, then new files and directories are created on the array. When the mover is invoked, files and subdirectories are transferred off the Cache disk/pool and onto the array."

I think this is the setting I am looking for then? I was using "prefer cache" before. This one has "When the mover is invoked, files and subdirectories are transferred off the Cache disk/pool and onto the array." so it seems to be moving the correct way.

 

I can not find any reference to the "mover" on the page that explains what it is.

 

I also have it set to HIGH-WATERMARK and minimum free space set to 20GB...

 

I also have "Automatically split any directory as required"... I do not really understand what the other options mean. I know they have something to do with moving the files by mirroring the directory structure on other disks... but not sure what it means (I read the help text, I still do not know what they mean). The best option I think would be for the root dir "videos" to be on each disk, and then copy entire sub directories in that dir. So /video/films/film1 /video/films/film2 .. if film2 didin';t fit, the entire film2 dir is stored on a new disk intead of having film2 split over disks.

 

I have to go to work now : ( but I have deleted the video share and remade it this time everything as default but the cache thing set to NO.. and set up the first 10TB transfer. It should be finished sometime after dinner. I didn't get any "no space" errors.

 

[JonathanM]

Just now, questionbot said:

"When the mover is invoked, files and subdirectories are transferred off the Cache disk/pool and onto the array." so it seems to be moving the correct way.

You got it.

 

Cache: No is the best option for the initial data load. You can set it to cache yes after the bulk of the data is loaded and you start using the array normally.

 

Files can't be split across disks, each file stays on a specific disk. When the minimum free space is met, the next file copied to the share will go to whichever disk meets the share criteria, and the corresponding folder will be automatically created.

 

It's important that you understand the choices that you make, I can't just tell you what I would do on my server, everybody has different configurations.

 

Mover is a script that moves files between the array and cache pools, on a schedule that you can change, with the settings you assigned to the specific share.

[ChatNoir]

The cache settings are not obvious to understand at first, you can look at the documentation to have a better understanding :

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Storage_Management#Share_Management

 

you can also clic on the text (highlighted in yellow) to have a detailled explaination and look at the behavior or the mover with the option selected (highlighted in green).