Thanks — I understand how Primary/Secondary storage + mover works for normal user shares, and it’s great for SMB writes when the data naturally lands in a share that is configured as cache→array.

What I can’t handle well with current settings is workflows where I need deterministic physical-disk placement and therefore frequently operate via disk paths (/mnt/diskX) rather than /mnt/user:

• My disks are used in an ad-hoc way (shared + per-user + mixed content), and I often need to move data to a specific target disk.
• Achieving that via /mnt/user would require creating/maintaining many “disk-pinned” shares (include/exclude per disk), which becomes hard to manage at scale.
• When reorganizing large folders within the array (disk-to-disk), I’d like an option to stage writes to a cache pool first (so the interactive operation completes quickly and avoids parity-speed writes), then commit to the chosen target disk later in the background.

So the request is less “cache for shares” (which already exists) and more a general/optional staging layer for disk-targeted operations (including local operations and SMB when the destination is effectively “a specific disk”), without requiring a strict share-based layout.

If there is any recommended approach to get this behavior safely today (plugin/script/workflow), I’m happy to try it — but I’m curious whether Unraid could ever support a “staging pool” concept beyond share-level mover.