Operating system and version (e.g., Ubuntu 24.04):
Ubuntu 24.04
Web server and version (e.g, Apache 2.4.25):
Apache/2.4.58 (Ubuntu)
Reverse proxy and version _(e.g. nginx 1.27.2)
none
PHP version (e.g, 8.3):
PHP 8.3.6
Installation method (e.g. AlO, NCP, Bare Metal/Archive, etc.)
Bare Metal
Are you using CloudfIare, mod_security, or similar? (Yes / No)
No
Summary of the issue you are facing:
I would like to utilize other drives in my system to store files. Can you only have 1 data directory? Ideally I would like to add paths to other directories on other drives in my system. Is there a way to do this?
I am planning to move my 8T data to NC, so far I have planned to have the root data directory kept in its place and have a number of subdirectories as links to the mount points for the disks I will go to add with time.
Something like
/var/main-data/disk2 → /mnt/disk2
/var/main-data/disk3 → /mnt/disk3
As long as I will keep the permissions the same as expected from NC, I see no reason for it not work, unless someone else can point us to a better handling of disks added over time.
You can use external folders: the admin can then mount an arbitrary folder on the host within some users home dirs. (I am unsure if the user can move them along to be honest. I would have to test myself) This is useful to embed existing folder structures and making NC aware that these might be changed by external programs (hence external folders).
If it is “just” to combine smaller disks to a bigger storage, NC would have the full control over the files. Then, you could mount part of the folder tree from one separate disk. I find this introduces arbitrary quotas and might not be preferable. Alternatives are LVM, (soft) RAID, btrfs/zfs, or similar to join storage.
Best would be to describe what you want to achieve so that you get good answers.