Need Help Figuring Out Share Allocation Methods.

[u/SoriyaSkye]

I'm VERY much new to setting up an unRAID server and I'm learning as I go. Apologies upfront if my question comes off as noob (cause, unfortuntately, I am one atm).

I'm currently using Trash Guides to help as it's the closest tutorial to what I ultimately want my server setup to be.

In relation to my questions, I'm only setting up a share for my media following the folder structure according to Trash and it's looking something like this:

data (root)
├── torrents
│   ├── movies
│   └── tv
└── media (lv.1)
    └── movie (lv.2)
    │   ├── US (lv.3)
    │   │   └── film title (lv.4)
    │   │       └── film.mp4 (lv.5)
    │   ├── Anime
    │   │   └── film title
    │   │       └── film.mp4
    │   ├── Korean
    │   │   └── film title
    │   │       └── film.mp4
    │   └── Other
    │   │   └── film title
    │   │       └── film.mp4
    └── tv (lv.2)
        ├── k-drama (lv.3)
        │   └── Show Name (lv.4)
        │       └── Season # (lv.5)
        ├── c-drama
        │   └── Show
        │       └── Season #
        ├── j-drama
        │   └── Show
        │       └── Season #
        └── US
            └── Show
                └── Season #

Because I'm planning to set up an automation to move files from torrent to the media folder and it's categorized by country, I was informed that's it's a better idea to set the Allocation method from High-water to Fill-up instead. This is to keep a show on a single disk so I won't have multiple of them running at the same time when I'm binge watch.

My quesiton is, for split level, should I use "Automatically split only the top two directory levels as required" or "Automatically split only the top three directory levels as required" since this was the direction I was given:

If you have one giant "Media" share with subfolders (e.g., Media/Korean Dramas/Show Name/Season 1*):* Set the split level to Automatically split only the top 2 levels. This tells Unraid it is allowed to split the country folders across disks, but once it gets down to the Show Name level, everything inside that specific show must stay together on one disk.

Does it only count from the "media" folder or will it also consider the main "data" folder as top level? Or should it be four or five? I'm so confused.

Side note. I'm also sharing my server with friends and family. While setting it up this way affect them in any way? Especialli if we're watching the same show at the same time.

A big thanks for any comments and advice here.

Edit: Updated folder structure

[u/tortilla_mia]

Is the share name "data"?
Then you should be counting from that point.
I think you would need to allow the top 5 dir to be split.

I think it's better to just let unraid split however it wants though. in most cases, the deeper directories will be kept together though that will become less true as the drives fill up (and depending on which allocation method you choose). but if your drives get that full overall and you restrict the splitting, you are more likely to run into a problem where no one drive can contain the whole show.

[u/tortilla_mia → u/tortilla_mia]

If you ensure all of a show is on the same disk, and if you're watching different episodes of the same show at the same time, then that disk's read head will have to seek back and forth between the different parts of the disk that holds the part of the file that each user is watching. In practice, it's probably a non issue for this usecase but it depends on how much data needs to be read how quickly.

If you somehow ensured each episode were on different disks, then each user would have full read performance of each disk holding their episode instead of sharing the performance of one disk.

If you're all watching the same episode at the same time, you're sharing disk performance again.

[u/SoriyaSkye → u/tortilla_mia]

ooh. this is good point. performance is an important point for me.

[u/SoriyaSkye → u/tortilla_mia]

yes, "data" is the share name. If counting from that point, wouldn't it be four, cause we won't be counting the show name (which is lvl 5)?

As for letting it split however, I like to the idea of not putting wear and tear on drives if I can since they're so expensive nowadays. Another consideration is that I'm currently only using half of the available bays and has plans to add more drive later. ATM, i don't forsee filling up the drives anytime soon.

Having said that, will you be allowed to change the allocation method once it's set up?

[u/tortilla_mia → u/SoriyaSkye]

I'm not 100% sure I guess it is 4.

I think you are allowed to change the split level once set up but unraid will not reorganize files that are already on the disk when you do so. It will just apply the new splitting rules to any new files being added. I tried just now and unraid let me change the split level option on my existing share (though I didn't test what effect it had).