How do you store your data?

So I have been reading a lot today (haven't got much done today at work obviously) and I am wondering what most people do with their data. I have just started in the IT field a few years ago so I am not a novice user, but at the same time I am no genius either. I have been turning a bunch of people I work with over to unRAID for their media files and they always ask me questions I have no answers to. This is what prompts my next question. Up til now, I have just enabled user shares (Movies, Shows, Music, etc.) and just let unRAID do its thing as far as what disk to put stuff on and how to handle all that stuff. It has been fine for the most part, but now I am seeing that more people are actually dropping their data directly onto the disks they want to put it on instead of letting unRAID do its thing with the settings they setup in unRAID. Why? What advantages is there? I am imaging that it would be more work to move files around once a disk fills up and whatnot, so why not just set an allocation method and let it go forth and conquer? I am just curious what the reasoning behind it is, because I know there will be some very good responses. Particularly people who use user shares for their media players (maybe with read only access) and still put the data directly on whatever disk they choose. With the automation software I use currently (Sonar and CouchPotato) I find it much easier to just point them at those user shares and let them write directly to it and just drop it in those shares that way, as opposed to me telling it what disk to go to, and then once that drive fills up, changing things around. It seems like doing it the other way would be making things harder than it has to be, with me tinkering with my server a lot more than I really have to. I look forward to learning something today.... Lets hear the responses!

Some folks just like to feel like their disks are "balanced" ... or that it's somehow more "organized" to keep some things together on specific disks.

Personally, I think one of the best features of UnRAID is in fact the user shares, which let UNRAID manage all of the disks as if they were a single BIG disk => so I do exactly as you've described.    When I have a new movie, I just copy it to "Movies" and let it go where it may.

There's NO compelling reason to specify which disk you want each movie on.    There are a variety of reasons given; but in general there are equally good counterpoints to every reason I've heard.

Clearly others have different opinions ... I suspect you'll see a few of those shared here 

 

 

Clearly others have different opinions ... I suspect you'll see a few of those shared here 

I am hoping for exactly that! I would like to hear from folks who do the same thing you and I both do as well though, so I appreciate that! I know that at least a few people think the same way we do but I also am curious to other folks reasoning behind why they drop the data onto a specific disk.

Some of the common reasons are ...

=>  I want to keep all of my series episodes together; or a specific category of movies; or perhaps a specific type of music together without dealing with split levels.

=>  I want to split my data across disks so if a disk fails I won't lose too much data

=>  I want to ensure nothing is ever stored on the slower inner cylinders of my disks

=>  I'm just OCD and want to CONTROL where all of my files are stored

=>  I have a mix of slow and fast disks of varying areal density, and want to put the content that requires the most bandwidth on my fastest disks

etc.