Split Level?

[pballs]

Hello All,

So i have a strange issue with Split Level - i have the following structure:

User Share = TVSeries

Folder = SeriesName

Folder = Season

 

The user share is set at High Water allocation, and i have it set as split level 2, so shouldn't it then put each season onto a different disk?  (i have 4 drives, 1 parity)  - but it doesnt seem to be doing that, all series and seasons are getting put on disk 1.. what am i missing?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Squid]

What size drives and how full are they?

[pballs]

ah, that might be it  they are 4tb drives, with only about 40gb on one drive in total - i thought split level should put files across drives irrelevant of disk space? (so, say in my example above, season 1 on drive 1, season 2 on drive 2 etc?) or have i understood that wrong?

[Squid]

All else being equal, then yes.  But highwater will fill the drives to 50% before moving on.  After everything else is equal, then season 1, 2, 3 etc will all stay on the drive it was created on.

[trurl]

Split level is really about keeping things together. So a season doesn't get split. It overrides other settings like allocation method that might cause Unraid to choose a different disk than where episodes for the season are already. 

[Frank1940]

By the same token, it also causes problems when the disk becomes full.  It will prevent the process that runs the Unraid share system from storing a file below the split on any disk except the one contain that season.  If that disk is full, the write will fail!!!  And the user has no clue about why...

 

As I recall from way back when disks were much smaller (say, 250GB), there was a genuine real problem with DVD storage of .VOB files in the VIDEO_TS folder.  You, first, have to understand that all .VOB are limited in size to 1GB and all of the files are that exact size EXCEPT for the last one.  (A full length movie will require from three to seven .VOB files.)  Because they are exactly the same length, they can literally end in the middle of a  spoken word!  Imagine waiting a minimum of 6 seconds to hear the last part of a word while waiting for the next disk to spin up!  (A similar situation can occur with some BluRay disks but virtually all of those breaks do occur at the end of a scene.)

 

My recommendation is to avoid split levels at all cost.  It should only be employed as a last resort.  Most of the time, it is simply being used because someone has a bad case of OCD...

[lionelhutz]

Set the allocation method to most free then each series will start on the most empty disk. 

 

I use split level on my TV share and have never had an issue with failure to write. I watch the free space on my disks and 2x in the last 10+ years I moved some active TV series to a more empty disk even though the fuller disk had over 200 gig still free.  Most likely, the active series still filling the disk would have all ended before the disk got full.

[JonathanM]

On 11/1/2020 at 5:14 PM, Frank1940 said:

Most of the time, it is simply being used because someone has a bad case of OCD...

I feel attacked.🙂

[Squid]

On 11/1/2020 at 3:14 PM, Frank1940 said:

Most of the time, it is simply being used because someone has a bad case of OCD...

😁

 

I personally don't see the point in split levels.  I can understand why people might want to do it, but just can't understand why they actually do use it.