Volume Bind Mounts

[nate872711]

Hello,

In the docker compose example for volumes, it lists "- /data/cotton:/app/files".

Is there anything special I need to do so I can add multiple storage drives? In filebrowser for example, any drive would be listed as :/srv/yourdrive.

Thanks for the help

[bvdcode]

Hey @nate872711, thanks for asking 🙂

For multiple drives, the simplest approach is to combine them into a storage pool on your server, so they appear as one storage location. Then mount a folder from that pool into Cotton:

volumes:
  - /data/cotton:/app/files

Cotton only needs that one mount. Adding separate drive mounts won’t automatically distribute files between them.

One difference from FileBrowser is worth explaining: Cotton manages its own encrypted, deduplicated storage. Your files and folders remain accessible through the web interface, sync clients, and WebDAV, but /app/files contains encrypted chunks rather than ordinary files with their original names. Existing files therefore need to be uploaded into Cotton first.

Alternatively, S3-compatible storage removes the need for a persistent local storage mount for the Cotton container; PostgreSQL still needs persistent storage.

Which operating system or NAS platform are you using? That would help suggest the simplest setup for your drives.

[bvdcode]

There is also a more hands-on workaround: Cotton stores chunks in hash-prefix directories (/app/files/00 through /app/files/ff), so you can mount those directories from different drives. For example, assign 30% of the prefixes to one drive and 70% to another. It’s a bit of a hack, but the content-addressed storage layout makes this possible 🙂

[nate872711]

They're individual drives hosted on a mac mini. The container would be ran on a ubuntu machine using docker. The drives are shared to the ubuntu machine over the network.

[bvdcode]

Thanks for clarifying! One option on Ubuntu is mergerfs, which can present several mounted directories as a single storage folder for Cotton

[nate872711]

All the drives are in the /mnt point on the ubuntu machine. As far as pooling the storage on the mac mini, that isn't possible.

I'm looking to replace filebrowser and wanted to try this.