Disk Storage for Recordings with Multiple Drives

[SkierHiker]

I'm trying to figure out how SageTV calculates the amount of disk storage available for recordings. It works fine when you only have one drive but in my case I have multiple drives but only one drive for recording. The other drives are just for storing recordings for playback. Here is my scenario:

Drive D: - 400 GB for recording. I tell SageTV to use the entire drive for recordings.

Drive E:/Recordings - 800 GB network drive. I move shows from D: to E:/Recordings and tell SageTV to only use the amount of disk space being used in the Recordings directory. This makes SageTV think the drive is full so it will not try to save a recording there. There are other files and folders on E: that are not recordings.

Drive F:/Recordings - 1.5 TB network drive. Same as E:/Recordings.

The objective here is to have shows on my network drives without recording to them. I only want to record to my local drive. But when I set this up, SageTV seems to get confused and does not report the correct amount of available disk space on the local drive.

Any thoughts? Thanks - Mark.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by SkierHiker

I'm trying to figure out how SageTV calculates the amount of disk storage available for recordings. It works fine when you only have one drive but in my case I have multiple drives but only one drive for recording. The other drives are just for storing recordings for playback. Here is my scenario:

Drive D: - 400 GB for recording. I tell SageTV to use the entire drive for recordings.

Drive E:/Recordings - 800 GB network drive. I move shows from D: to E:/Recordings and tell SageTV to only use the amount of disk space being used in the Recordings directory. This makes SageTV think the drive is full so it will not try to save a recording there. There are other files and folders on E: that are not recordings.

Drive F:/Recordings - 1.5 TB network drive. Same as E:/Recordings.

The objective here is to have shows on my network drives without recording to them. I only want to record to my local drive. But when I set this up, SageTV seems to get confused and does not report the correct amount of available disk space on the local drive.

Any thoughts? Thanks - Mark.

Instead of E: and F: being recording directories, set them up as imported video directories. In theory, Sage should see the recordings and keep them linked to their wiz.bin information. I say in theory because for me, for some reason, this doesn't work. The recordings end up becoming just imported videos. I then have to manually re-add them via the webserver. Apparently I'm an anomaly though, other people seem to have this working properly so It might be worth a try for you.


Nick

[GKusnick]

What Nick said. When you set up a recording directory, you're giving Sage permission to record to it and auto-delete from it. If you don't want those things to happen, make it an import directory instead of trying to fake Sage out by playing games with free-space rules.

[SkierHiker]

That worked, thanks. For some reason I thought that defining those folders under import directories would make the videos show up under the video library instead of recordings. I wonder if that wasn't the behavior way back in version 3 and 4. I just recently made the jump from 4 to 6.

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by nick_l

Apparently I'm an anomaly though, other people seem to have this working properly so It might be worth a try for you.

I'm in the same boat... I have tried multiple times to get this to work, followed all the FAQ's about moving recording, etc, and still could not keep Sage from moving the recordings to Imported Videos.

-Dan

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by CyRex

I'm in the same boat... I have tried multiple times to get this to work, followed all the FAQ's about moving recording, etc, and still could not keep Sage from moving the recordings to Imported Videos.

-Dan

I'll share a workaround that has worked, at least for me.

* Have sage create .my files for the recordings you want to move.
* Remove the import directory from sage.
* Move the files and .mys to the import directory.
* Change the file path in the .my to reflect the new location.
* Re-add the import directory and have Sage rescan media.

This has worked very reliably for me. There may be an easier, better way to do this, but with all that is going on with Sage right now, Ie. FanArt, .my files, etc., I'm having a hard time keeping up with everything (Not that I'm complaining!!!)

Nick

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by nick_l

I'll share a workaround that has worked, at least for me.

Thanks, if I ever get up the motivation to try setting it up again, I'll give that a try.

There should really be an easier way... My problem is that I picked up an external 1TB eSATA drive with the intent of archiving recordings to, but the drive couldn't keep up with recording 3-4 streams and playing back 1. So, I wanted to set it up to record to my 1TB Raid-5 and then archive shows nightly to the external drive. No such luck, though...

-Dan

[SkierHiker]

I think they're two threads here. The solution to the one I started was to move my folder reference from Recording Directories to Import Video Directories. The path to the video was the same so nothing changed in the database. That's why SageTV still shows them as recordings and all the metadata is there.

However if you changed the path to the video, then it looks like SageTV searches the EPG for show data to populate the metadata. If it finds nothing (ie. your show has gone off the EPG), then SageTV treats as a regular video file and shows it as an imported video. I have this with StarTrek DS9. I moved all my back episodes and a few didn't make it and are in Imported Videos. I'm just waiting for them to get back into the EPG (ie. re-run) and then SageTV should then see them and populate the metadata and move them into Recordings (I think).