January 27, 201115 yr Hello I have the hardware to build my Unraid Server (1 x 2Tb for parity, 3 x 1.5 Tb for data and 1 x 250Gb for cache) Basically, I will store Movies, Pictures and Music (But the main quantity of space will be occupied by movies though) So I’m thinking about the following main structure: MOVIES PHOTOS MUSIC For MOVIES, I want to have something like that: • TV_SHOWS • DVD • DIVX And for PICTURES • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • 2009 • 2010 • 2011 And this is where I get confused…How should I arrange my 3 disks with the User Shares, the split level, the high water I’ve read so many things that I’m kind of lost now!!! For example, when I will want to create some additional folders inside the TV_SHOWS folder (like “Desperate Housewives”,”The Unit”, “CSI”, etc…) and then for each of them create sub-folders like Season1, Season2, Season3, etc….What will be the right steps? Any good tutorial or other post/threadsto refer to, with some basic and simple steps to follow? I know that my questions might sound silly, but there are no silly questions, only stupid answers.... Thanks
January 27, 201115 yr On my system I have five shares: TV Shows Films Photos Music Backup Within those shares I have created various folders e.g. In TV Shows I have my folder structure like: TV Shows ---------Stargate -----------------Season 1 -----------------Season 2 Etc The shares were created using the shares option within unRAID then further sub folders were created with a standard 'right click...new folder' iirc I decided on High Water for the shares but you might want to wait for somebody else to comment on that Edit: Take a look here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#User_shares_2
January 27, 201115 yr Author OK, when you set up Unraid for the 1st time, you created the shares (I like your structure by the way) with the share option within Unraid Meaning for each disk (Disk 1, Disk 2 and Disk 3 in my case) you create those shares? Then, when accessing the server from antoher computer, I will see the following structure: TVSHOWS FILMS PHOTOS MUSIC BACKUP And when I right click to create another sub-folder like Stargate and another sub folder like Season 1, it will be split on the 3 drives?
January 27, 201115 yr By default, all user shares are allowed to span all drives. When they choose to span drives depends on the disk allocation method you choose. For your application, I would recommend High Water. How it works specifically is kind of complicated (you can read about it in the official unRAID manual), but simply put it attempts to minimize unnecessary disk spin ups. You can either leave it at that, or you can customize further. Here's a few other customization options: Included/excluded disks - specify which disks the share is and is not allowed to use. For example, if your Movies share to include disk1 and disk2 and exclude disk3, then your Movies share will only span disks 1 and 2. Split Level - designate at which directory level unRAID is allowed to split files. See the manual for more info. Note that Split Level 0 is different from the rest. Valid/Invalid users - if you are using User Share security, you can designate which users do and do not have access to individual shares. Export (SMB) - choose permissions and how the share will be exported. Hidden means that it will not be broadcasted in your network neighborhood, but you can still access it by typing in the name directly. Exceptions - add certain users who have the opposite permissions of the share's normal export setting. For example, you can set a share to Export Read-Only and add an exception for the 'french_guy' account. This means that every user will have read-only access to the share except for french_guy, who will have the opposite permissions, which in this case are read/write.
January 27, 201115 yr All this applies only to writes to the array. For reads, it will collect files from any drive that has a root directory the same as the user share name. Excludes are not excluded! It is hard to find this fact documented.
February 16, 201115 yr Author OK, here we are I have Unraid running (4.7) with 2Tb as parity and 1.5Tb as data disk (so far....I will add later 2 other 1.5Tb disks) I want to create the following structure TV Shows Films Photos Music Backup And I have to say that I'm kind of lost...What should I put for allocation method, min free space, split level?
February 17, 201115 yr Have you read this down through the split level part? http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Un-Official_UnRAID_Manual#Allocation_method Peter
February 19, 201115 yr Author Interesting reading Let's say I want the following structure MEDIA ---DVD Movies ---------Movie Folder ---BluRay Movies ---------Movie Folder ---TV Shows ---------TV Show Folder ---------------------Season Folder ---Pictures ---------Years folder ---------------------Months folder Does that mean I should create the user share MEDIA directly from the webGUI, with a split level of 2 and high water And then all the other subfolders will be created from Wondows Explorer?
February 19, 201115 yr Interesting reading Let's say I want the following structure MEDIA ---DVD Movies ---------Movie Folder ---BluRay Movies ---------Movie Folder ---TV Shows ---------TV Show Folder ---------------------Season Folder ---Pictures ---------Years folder ---------------------Months folder Does that mean I should create the user share MEDIA directly from the webGUI, with a split level of 2 and high water And then all the other subfolders will be created from Wondows Explorer? Correct.
February 19, 201115 yr Author Great...thanks I' m transferring files from my DSN323 NAS to Unraid Server, and I have something like 20MB/sec All wired, gigabit adapters and cat6 cables. Primary router is Dlink DIR655, 2nd router (as access point) is DIR 655 as well Is it normal, or is there anything to teak to go faster? Thanks
February 19, 201115 yr if you are writing straight to the protected array then this is "normal" although a bit on the low side maybe attach a syslog to see if nothing is wrong to be sure... if you have lot to transfer ... setup the server without parity drive move everything like you want (average speed will be MUCH higher) and when finished add parity drive and let unraid calculate parity
February 19, 201115 yr Author Yes, I have a lot to transfer I have attached the syslog How do I "deactivate" the parity drive? Thanks syslog-2011-02-19.txt
February 19, 201115 yr Yes, I have a lot to transfer I have attached the syslog How do I "deactivate" the parity drive? Thanks Stop the array, go to the devices page, un-assign it. (oh yeah, start the array back up with it un-assigned) Joe L.
February 19, 201115 yr Author Well, it' s not any faster without the parity drive. I'm still at 22MB/sec (copying for example 24, the 8 seasons which is 206 files) Does that mean the DNS 323 is the bottle neck? Did somebody look at the syslog I sent? Is there any thing else I should try to run faster?
February 19, 201115 yr Well, it' s not any faster without the parity drive. I'm still at 22MB/sec (copying for example 24, the 8 seasons which is 206 files) Does that mean the DNS 323 is the bottle neck? Yes, it's your DNS 323. Google is your friend: http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/review/2006/11/20/D-Link-DNS-323/p2
February 19, 201115 yr Most likely as shown in the post above. Can you monitor the CPU Usage during transfer?
February 19, 201115 yr French_guy it is your DNS323 I have the same device well actually 2 of them and mine was a slow transfer from the device to the array. Don't disable your parity drive because its not going to make a big difference. What I've noticed is the DNS-323 had a really slick and easy to figure out interface, but sadly it wasn't as expandable as unRAID. Trust me I have two of them and now I have more space and less headache trying to keep backups. Now its time I think I might explore modding mine. As for Orginizing your disks don't get frustrated. Just ask like you did and believe me people will help out. I'm running my shares a bit differently. User Shares: All Shares are Read Only by 3 users Movies --720 --480 --ISO --1080 TV MP3 Photos --2005 --2006 --2007 --2008 --2009 --2010 --2010 MISC --Downloads --iTunes Backup --Mandes Files --My Files Disk Shares \\tower\Disk1\Movies and \\tower\Disk3\Movies --720 --480 --ISO --1080 \\tower\Disk2\TV \\tower\Disk4\MP3 \\tower\Disk4\Photos --2005 --2006 --2007 --2008 --2009 --2010 --2010 \\tower\Disk4\MISC --Downloads --iTunes Backup --Mandes Files --My Files I use my User Shares for viewing only and I use my Disk Shares for writing, but they are exported as hidden. So I do all my own file management. I normally access them by using \\tower\Disk1\ My thoughts as feable minded as they are if they are hidden other users can't mess things up and it lowers my risk of a virus hitting my machine and attacking the files. When I transfer files around I wrote a few batch scripts that I click and it moves files.
February 19, 201115 yr Interesting reading Let's say I want the following structure MEDIA ---DVD Movies ---------Movie Folder ---BluRay Movies ---------Movie Folder ---TV Shows ---------TV Show Folder ---------------------Season Folder ---Pictures ---------Years folder ---------------------Months folder Does that mean I should create the user share MEDIA directly from the webGUI, with a split level of 2 and high water And then all the other subfolders will be created from Wondows Explorer? Yes, you would do that for your specified directory structure. Be aware of the following. Split leve 2 means each TV Show folder and each Years folder has to remain on the same disk. You will fail if the disk holding the show 24 is full and you try to add another season to the show. If you go higher than 2 on the split level then your movies could fragment out to muliple disks. So, as you can see it can be a compromise. You could have created seperate Movies, TV Shows, and Pictures shares and had more control over each one. Peter
February 19, 201115 yr Author OK, I'm open to any good proposition... Let's say I create user shares such as: Movies ---DVD folder ---DivX folder ---BluRay folder ---Kids folder TV Shows ---TV shows folder -------Seasons folder Pictures ---Years folder Backup What should be in that case the split level for each share? Still a 2? Is high water the best choice for my case? If my move my current files from the MEDIA share to the new shares, will it be faster than what I have now? When I want to add another disk (1.5TB very soon), I just have to install it and assign it, that's it? Nothing else to do?
February 19, 201115 yr Movies should likely be 2. The TV shows could start with 1 and be changed to 2 if you need to allow an individual TV show to split because you're out of room. Pictures could be the same as TV, start as 1 to keep the years together but you could also move it to 2 to allow the years to split. No idea what you're storing in Backup so I can't recommend a level setting there. You can also use the include and exclude disks to keep different items on different disks. You do know that a fair bit of this is personal preference. You can just add the new disk and it will start to be used if you don't use any include and exclude disks. Peter
February 19, 201115 yr Author 2 things I REALLY like with Unraid Server 1) The product itself is very nice 2) the support through the forum is AWESOME I did a try with FreeNAS, it's certainly a great product too, but for me it was much more complicated Install Unraid was flawless Thanks to all of you for your continuous support
February 20, 201115 yr Author Quick question: how do I remove a user share that I don't need anymore?
February 20, 201115 yr Quick question: how do I remove a user share that I don't need anymore? delete all the files and directories in it, then go to the web-management screen for shares, blank out its name and press apply.
February 21, 201115 yr I am about to be at the point where I am going to be setting up user shares. At the moment I am only using one data disk and one parity. If this is the case can I only do split level 1? I have been reading the tutorial but most of it is geared towards multiple disks.
February 21, 201115 yr Split level doesn't matter with 1 disk, that is why all the info has been about using multiple disks. Peter
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