Anyone evr tried a Drobo with Sage?

[Fountainhead]

Originally Posted by PGPfan

Sounds to me like you are trying to write to you virtual "movies" share. This won't be possible until TomM (unRaid's dev) releases version 4.2. What you need to do is to write to either any disks "Movie" share directly. Once that is done, got to one of the tabs (the name escapes me at the moment) and 're-scan' your "user shares". Now it will appear in the "Movies" share as you expect it to.

It will all be seamless and totally transparent in the much anticipated release that will enable "writeable user shares".

-PGPfan

Hmmm. Yeah, I certainly did copy it to the virtual movies share, and it appears there. If I open that share via UNC path or even map a drive to the virtual share, the file is there. I can even copy it from the virtual share to another location. Where is it being stored if not in the individual movies folders? And then if I do re-scan, it disappears.

My SHARES tab has a User Shares drop down box with an option for Export Read/Write*. Is that different from the writable user shares that you spoke of?

[PGPfan]

Chances are that you are 'caching' the files to a virtual share somewhere. It's definately 'not' being written to disk - that hasn't been implemented yet.

The Shares tab merely allows whatever shares you create as a user share to be read/write. You still have to write directly to that disk for it to work.

Example:

I want to write a DVD rip to my "Movies" share. If I write it to the 'user share', it will get cached somewhere but isn't on a disk. I know that disk 5 under "Movies" I have 25GB available, so I save my rip to x\Movies\fictitious movie. Now, I 're-scan' my user share and it exports the content of the "Movies" share from ALL DISKS into it's virtual share called Movies. I share this out to anyone on my network - they can't write to it, and can't delete anything from it. My 'writeable' shares I export as "writeable/hidden" so that I'm the only one that knows how to put data on it.

It isn't necessary to limit access like this, but it's how I do it.

When Tom releases "writeable user shares" it will work something like this:
(taken from the unRaid forum)

Enhanced user shares feature offers 2 allocation algorithms to choose on a share-by-share basis:
1. "most-free" - whenever a new file is created on a share, it's created on the disk with the most free space.
2. "highwater" - whenever a new file is created on a share, it's created on the disk with the least amount of space which is still above the current highwater value. Once no disk has any space above the current highwater value, the highwater value is divided by 2, and a disk is chosen. For example, suppose you have 3 100GB data disks. Initial highwater is set at 50GB. Files will get created on disk1 until disk 1 free space is less than 50GB, at which point we start allocating from disk2. When disk2 free space drops below 50GB we start allocating from disk3. When disk3 free space gets below 50GB, we now set highwater to 25GB, and disk1 starts getting used, etc.

In addition, you can specify the name of "unsplittable" directories. For example, suppose you designate "VIDEO_TS" as unsplittable. Then if a file needs to be created in the VIDEO_TS directory, it will get created on the disk where that VIDEO_TS directory currently exists, overriding the allocation algorithm.

Finally, you can restrict the set of disks that a share can use - that is, you can explicitly list the set of disks which may have space allocated to a share, or you can list a set of disks which are excluded from the share.

Also, no more re-scan button

So you can see it will work quite differently than we have now.

-PGPfan

[Fountainhead]

Wow. Thanks for that explanation. It makes sense to me now.

The current implementation looks fine for something like hosting ripped DVD's...which is one of the main intended functions for me. But another thing I'd wanted to do was host a large iTunes library. In the absence of a writable user share, that wouldn't seem possible because you'd need to be able to write to it. I guess I could always confine it to a single disk and map straight to the folder. Ditto something like a mass of digital photos. It'd be useless to open a photo from a user share, but not be able to edit and save it back.

The implementation or writable user shares seems key to me as far as being a total storage solution. Do you have any idea when this might occur? I've seen mention of it on the unraid forum goung back months, and I get the idea that it still might be a kind of a nebulous "someday."

In the meantime, I'll test out the functionality and stability with my DVD stuff.

[PGPfan]

Keep in mind that the whole goal of unRaid is for media storage, ie. a platform to run something like MCE, or SageTV, or BeyondTV off of. I have a large photo collection as well, and anybody on my network can freely browse it at will. Since only 'I' know how to access it in a writeable way, I have control over copying photo's over, editing them, etc. If someone wants to 'play' with some editing software, there is nothing preventing them from making a 'local' copy and using that. It's the security and integrity of the data that I'm concerned about and the fact that unRaid uses a 'real' parity disk to do that is the big attraction for me.

One way or another, unRaid can be configured to work for you the way you'd like (atleast until the writeable shares comes out). As for a time line, I know it's in private beta now, so it shouldn't be too long. If I were you, I'd send Tom and email and see what he has to say. He's always been GREAT and responding when I've had questions.

-PGPfan

[Blue]

I was just curious, are these solutions limited by the NTFS volume size limit of 2 TB?

Another aspect of WHS that wasn't mentioned is that you can pull any of the drives and plug them into another PC to access your files. I don't believe this is possible with RAID 5.

[stanger89]

NTFS doesn't have a 2TB volume limit. It supports up to 256TB volumes using 64k clusters:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...storfacts.mspx

Maximum Sizes on NTFS Volumes
In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 2^64 clusters minus 1 cluster. However, the maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in Windows XP Professional is 2^32 clusters minus 1 cluster. For example, using 64-KB clusters, the maximum NTFS volume size is 256 terabytes minus 64 KB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 terabytes minus 4 KB.

Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks support only partition sizes up to 2 terabytes, you must use dynamic volumes to create NTFS volumes over 2 terabytes. Windows XP Professional manages dynamic volumes in a special database instead of in the partition table, so dynamic volumes are not subject to the 2-terabyte physical limit imposed by the partition table. Therefore, dynamic NTFS volumes can be as large as the maximum volume size supported by NTFS.

[lotusvball]

Is there anyway we can get back to the original question. Has anyone used a Drobo with Sage?

[Blue]

Originally Posted by stanger89

NTFS doesn't have a 2TB volume limit. It supports up to 256TB volumes using 64k clusters:

It looks like that is true for dynamic volumes.

From TechNet:

Maximum Sizes on NTFS Volumes

In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 2^64 clusters. However, there are limitations to the maximum size of a volume, such as volume tables. By industry standards, volume tables are limited to 2^32 sectors.

Sector size, another limitation, is typically 512 bytes. While sector sizes might increase in the future, the current size puts a limit on a single volume of 2 terabytes (2 32 * 512 bytes, or 2 41 bytes). For now, 2 terabytes is considered the practical limit for both physical and logical volumes using NTFS.