What is the best mapped drives solution?

mcravenufo

mcravenufo

Ravenufo's Macs
Joined
Feb 28, 2001
Messages
5,590
I'm setting up my new file server and I am wondering if their is a preferred way to set up multiple drives for mapping drive letters in my HTPC. I'm using FreeNAS on my file server and will be using it only to store ISO's of my movies for my HTPC to play.

Should I add each disk individually and if I eventually put in 6 disks just map each disk to a different drive letter on my HTPC for MC to access?

Or should I use a file system that pools the hard drives into one disk so that I only need to share 1 drive for MC to use?

The media server will not contain critical data or personal files that I can not lose. It will only contain ISO's of movies that I own. However, I would still hate losing all of my time and effort to creating the ISO's.

Is there a file system that can pool the disks so I only need 1 drive letter but not lose all data if 1 disk fails?
 
I dont know how it treats network drives, but you could include them within a library on windows 7 and then have MC look inside the library for those files. If you use Media Browser you can create libraries within media browser and include multiple folders within a custom library. These options are both drive agnostic so you dont need to worry about doing anything special with the drive letters
 
I currently have a 2 drive setup. For my largest drive (2TB) I just share the whole thing. My other "spare" drive I create specific folder shares.

There isn't really a "best" way to share folders. It's really up to how you want to be able to access your stuff.
 
You could mount the remote folder to a local folder on your computer.

Code: 
md c:\media
mklink /d c:\media\drive_1 \\myserver\myshare1
mklink /d c:\media\drive_2 \\myserver\myshare2

This would give you a folder called media with two folders in it. Not sure if it's going to benefit you at all.

I think the better use of this would be to organize multiple shares into one directory -- if you had something like:

\\myserver\documents
\\myserver\mp3
\\myserver\movies

You could use mklink to mount them under one folder and see them all that way.
 
Let me give an example of what may happen in the future.

Currently I have 1 2TB hard drive with 2 shared folders on it: Movies, and TV Shows.

When that hard drive runs out of space I will need to add another hard drive. Is it "best" to create 2 more shared folders with the same name. So I would at this point have 4 shared drive letters on the Windows box (e.g. First Hard drive - f:\Movies, g:\TV Shows; Second Hard drive - h:\Movies, i:\TV Shows)

Or do you guys pool the drives and when another hard drive is added those 2 shares (Movies & TV Shows) will access the new hard drive as well?

My concern is that when I eventually get up to 8 or more hard drives I will have 16 shared drives on my Windows box.
 
If you're running Windows XP or later on the server (edit - later post tells me you are), create a single shared folder and create junctions to the folders on the separate drives in it (Link Shell Extension makes this very easy - http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html). Note that you must use junctions - symbolic links will not work for this.

If your server is Linux, create a single shared folder and inside that symlink to each of the media folders. Note that symbolic links work correctly for Linux.

In both cases, you end up with a single share that can access all the media (as different folders).

Note that the Windows 7 backup cannot back up a directory containing junctions, although it sounds like you don't indend to back up any of this data.

My example - I have the following drives on my server:

1. C: 80GB boot drive (to ease reinstallations - installing onto dynamic discs is a PITA)

2. 3x 1.5TB drives (dynamic), configured as:
2a. D: 300GB mirrored volume using 2 of the drives (this volume is also backed up periodically)
2b. E: 3.5TB JBOD (spanned) volume using all remaining space on all 3 drives (holds data that if I lose it, so be it).

C: has the shared directory, which contains junctions to various folders e.g.

C:\Shared\Pictures -> D:\My Pictures
C:\Shared\HTPC -> E:\HTPC

If I get another drive, I will add it to the JBOD volume and extend the E: partition. So I am using both the above junction trick above, and a filesystem pooling the hard drives.

If the boot drive fails, then I can fairly quickly reinstall (I have a base image of it). If one of the large drives fails, then the mirrored data is safe (at worst the mirror is broken, and I'd better do an immediate backup). All data on the JBOD volume is "gone" (I could probably recover much of it, but that might take a considerable amount of work).

This post ended up being considerably longer than I initially intended ...
 
Last edited:
Are you using media browser? I had my TV shows and movies on 4 different drives, but in media browser set up, I pointed all the different drives and folders together, so when I view my "TV" in media browser, all the shows are shown together (even though they are on 4 different drives). So to me, adding another drive in the future will only require adding the folder to media browser's config. The way I use the content is transparent, so it doesn't bother me to have 16 different drives, because it all shows together as if it were one.

If you don't use media browser, I'm sure what I wrote above has nothing to do with your situation. ha.
 
check out http://www.amahi.org/ That distro is purpose built to be a home server & it will drive pool with duplication if you want.. Gives it alot of advantages over freenas, but still free..
 
I would raid them so it's just one big share. Look into Linux MD raid. Very solid and easy to setup. You can have a raid array setup in minutes, the documentation is easy, and it's only a couple lines to get an array going. Mess around with it for a bit before you put into production of course, just to get a feel such as how to replace a failed drive, and what not. Raid 5 is probably the best bet (3 drives minimum)
 
you might check out unRAID, it's designed to be a media server OS. I have 7 HDs of different sizes in it but have shared folders like "Movies" "music" "TV" etc that span all the drives. In other words, I only see "one" folder called "movies" even though the physical movies are scattered across all the drives. Check it out, see if you like. You can run 3 drives for free(one is parity, two are storage. If using 2TB drives you get 4 TB storage.) more drives needs paid license. Read the forums.
 
xrintrahx said:
Are you using media browser?
Click to expand...

This really is the way to go when you start getting into large libraries. Personally, I love navigating through folders rather than some other UI, but the problems of dealing with symbolic links, etc. get to be a PITA, especially when it comes to keeping track of backups. I prefer to just keep things separate and when I do get a huge library again, I'll probably just go with a large NAS, WHS, etc.
 
xrintrahx said:
Are you using media browser? I had my TV shows and movies on 4 different drives, but in media browser set up, I pointed all the different drives and folders together, so when I view my "TV" in media browser, all the shows are shown together (even though they are on 4 different drives). So to me, adding another drive in the future will only require adding the folder to media browser's config. The way I use the content is transparent, so it doesn't bother me to have 16 different drives, because it all shows together as if it were one.

If you don't use media browser, I'm sure what I wrote above has nothing to do with your situation. ha.
Click to expand...

Not using media browser but after a quick look, it seems promising.


topcat989 said:
you might check out unRAID, it's designed to be a media server OS. I have 7 HDs of different sizes in it but have shared folders like "Movies" "music" "TV" etc that span all the drives. In other words, I only see "one" folder called "movies" even though the physical movies are scattered across all the drives. Check it out, see if you like. You can run 3 drives for free(one is parity, two are storage. If using 2TB drives you get 4 TB storage.) more drives needs paid license. Read the forums.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. I haven't heard of unRAID. Will check it out as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top