WHS to W7 and Unraid - Have some ???s

[icon123]

Hey all,

I currently have a WHS system that is running SageTV v7 (one of the RCs) along with a drive pool for my media. I plan on seperating Sage to a new box under Windows 7 and the media under Unraid (two seperate systems). These are my questions:

- How do I transfer my sage settings and what not to the new box?

- I plan on recording directly to a HDD in the sage box as I do now. I notice some people then automatically copy the shows to the unraid server. What is the best way of doing this? Will sage still put the shows in the 'tv' section or will they now fall under the 'video' section?

- I know this one is more of an unraid question, but... I would like to take advantage of spinning down of the HDDs, but don't really want to have to wait for them to spin up when browsing. Outside of directory caching, is there anything that can be done? Any scripts that would work?

That's all for now. Thank for you help.

icon123

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by icon123

Hey all,

I currently have a WHS system that is running SageTV v7 (one of the RCs) along with a drive pool for my media. I plan on seperating Sage to a new box under Windows 7 and the media under Unraid (two seperate systems). These are my questions:

- How do I transfer my sage settings and what not to the new box?

Take a look here in the FAQ.

Originally Posted by icon123

- I plan on recording directly to a HDD in the sage box as I do now. I notice some people then automatically copy the shows to the unraid server. What is the best way of doing this? Will sage still put the shows in the 'tv' section or will they now fall under the 'video' section?

The best way to automate moving would be via SJQ. I'm not sure if anyone has written a mover script for V4 yet, but I plan on doing so soon if no one else does

Originally Posted by icon123

- I know this one is more of an unraid question, but... I would like to take advantage of spinning down of the HDDs, but don't really want to have to wait for them to spin up when browsing. Outside of directory caching, is there anything that can be done? Any scripts that would work?

There is/was a plugin for V6 that would initiate a spinup of the disks on an unRAID box when you navigated to the videos folder, but I don't think it ever got ported to V7. Waiting for the spinup is really not that bad, only takes a few seconds on my setup and is not something that really bothers me.

Be sure to check out the unRAID forums and wiki for help and info before you start your build. It can be a bit picky on hardware, especially network cards, but as long as you stay inside the lines things just work. Here is a link to the configuration tutorial I put together (and others have expanded on) after I built an unRAID rig. There are no major changes in 4.6 so everything is still current.

[calypsocowboy]

I'm going down the same route now. So far I've just got my unRaid box setup and SageTV setup. Still working to integrate them.

[icon123]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Take a look here in the FAQ.

The best way to automate moving would be via SJQ. I'm not sure if anyone has written a mover script for V4 yet, but I plan on doing so soon if no one else does

There is/was a plugin for V6 that would initiate a spinup of the disks on an unRAID box when you navigated to the videos folder, but I don't think it ever got ported to V7. Waiting for the spinup is really not that bad, only takes a few seconds on my setup and is not something that really bothers me.

Be sure to check out the unRAID forums and wiki for help and info before you start your build. It can be a bit picky on hardware, especially network cards, but as long as you stay inside the lines things just work. Here is a link to the configuration tutorial I put together (and others have expanded on) after I built an unRAID rig. There are no major changes in 4.6 so everything is still current.

Thanks for the reply. I was more concerned with going from WHS to W7, if different platforms would make a difference upgrading. I assume I should bring my current install up to the current v7 before I transfer over.

That would be great if you made a moving script. Let me know if you do. I haven't used sjq yet and it does seem like there is a learning curve. I have enough things/changes being made, a script would help.

I'm not too worried about the spin up delay, wondering if the rest of the family will be bothered by it though.

[Spectrum]

There's no difference in going from WHS to Win7 and no need to install V6 then upgrade it to V7. Just install V7, get tuners etc working, then import wiz.bin and old recordings.

AFA the mover script, I have a few ideas but haven't had time to try them out yet. Keep an eye on the SJQ thread linked above. When I (or anyone else) get's one written it will probably show up there.

[icon123]

I guess the real question is can I copy over files from my current WHS sage install to the new Window 7 sage install that will keep me from having to setup the tuner card and remap the channels again? The turner card will be moved from the old pc to the new pc, it is a hvr-2250. As of mater of fact all the hardware will be the same (except for the case), just the OS is changing.

[gplasky]

Anytime you move to a new piece of hardware you don't want to use the .properties from from a previous install done on different hardware. Even same hardware and different OS can be an issue. You'll want to configure the tuner and remap. Reason being even though it's the same hardware the different OS may give new IDs to the devices.

Gerry

[TobyG]

I've seen the question about moving recordings pop up every once in a while, and I like to share my setup, which has worked flawlessly since I set it up a couple of years ago. My NAS (a QNAP TS-409) works great as an archive, but it's too slow to reliably handle live recordings (and the network is theoretically subject to traffic slowdowns). So I record to the HDD on the local Sage machine, and I use the NAS as an automatic archive location, moving old recordings to the NAS weekly. Since I use RAID 5, there's redundancy if one drive fails, and it's easy to expand with additional drives. Basically, I use a simple batch file, the free Microsoft Robocopy program, and the scheduler built into Windows. I wrote about it here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...951#post332951

Hope that helps!

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by TobyG

I've seen the question about moving recordings pop up every once in a while, and I like to share my setup, which has worked flawlessly since I set it up a couple of years ago. My NAS (a QNAP TS-409) works great as an archive, but it's too slow to reliably handle live recordings (and the network is theoretically subject to traffic slowdowns). So I record to the HDD on the local Sage machine, and I use the NAS as an automatic archive location, moving old recordings to the NAS weekly. Since I use RAID 5, there's redundancy if one drive fails, and it's easy to expand with additional drives. Basically, I use a simple batch file, the free Microsoft Robocopy program, and the scheduler built into Windows. I wrote about it here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...951#post332951

Hope that helps!

Stopping and starting the sageTV service is a harsh way to trigger a rescan and relying on the Windows schedulare gives you no way to test if a recording is in progress. I have been threatening to write a mover script for SJQ V4 but haven't found the time yet. I'll post it in the SJQ thread if/when I do get it done so keep an eye out there if you are interested in using SJQ for this.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Take a look here in the FAQ.

The best way to automate moving would be via SJQ. I'm not sure if anyone has written a mover script for V4 yet, but I plan on doing so soon if no one else does

Thanks for posting up FAQ about moving to a new computer or OS. My SageTV is currently on XP and I plan to re-install everything on the same hardware with Windows 7. I have both 32 and 64 bit DVDs. I am thinking of installing the 64 bit version since I don't use firewire and I want the option to expand the memory for the SageTV accessory programs.

I haven't upgraded to SJQ version 4 yet. I might use DirMon2 to move the files to the unRAID server automatically. DirMon2 is a lot easier to configure than SJQ. I think SJQ is the best choice for selectively processing only the commercial channels with Comskip.

Be careful with unRAID and Advanced Format Drives. The Advanced Format Drives require a jumper in each drive. Some people don't have good luck with the lower cost green drives and prefer the higher priced black or enterprise drives. I have 2 TB Advanced Format green drives. I did not know about the jumper required for the Advanced Format Drives, so I had to move a lot of data around to get all the jumpers installed.

Moving your SageTV install off of WHS is a good move. You can setup disk imaging and recover your SageTV back to a point in time in the past if you ever have problems. With WHS, your're stuck with a painful and slow scratch rebuild of SageTV and all the accessory programs and thousands of configuration parameter changes.

Dave

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by davephan

Thanks for posting up FAQ about moving to a new computer or OS. My SageTV is currently on XP and I plan to re-install everything on the same hardware with Windows 7. I have both 32 and 64 bit DVDs. I am thinking of installing the 64 bit version since I don't use firewire and I want the option to expand the memory for the SageTV accessory programs.

Thank Andy, I just posted a link

Originally Posted by davephan

I haven't upgraded to SJQ version 4 yet. I might use DirMon2 to move the files to the unRAID server automatically. DirMon2 is a lot easier to configure than SJQ. I think SJQ is the best choice for selectively processing only the commercial channels with Comskip.

DirMon2 works quite well and I used it for years. I believe Tmiranda has built in the ability to run Comskip selectively in the Commercial Detector plugin and it should be even easier to setup than DirMon2. Worth taking a look to see if it fits your needs.

Originally Posted by davephan

Be careful with unRAID and Advanced Format Drives. The Advanced Format Drives require a jumper in each drive. Some people don't have good luck with the lower cost green drives and prefer the higher priced black or enterprise drives. I have 2 TB Advanced Format green drives. I did not know about the jumper required for the Advanced Format Drives, so I had to move a lot of data around to get all the jumpers installed.

Yep, AF drives can bite ya. I was just looking at the roadmap on limetech's site and 4.7 has all the progress bars at 100%. We should see a 4.7 RC soon and if no issues arise a final release a week or so after the RC and it will support AF drives with or without the jumper. Tom (limetech) has been bustin his hump this year!

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I was just looking at the roadmap on limetech's site and 4.7 has all the progress bars at 100%. We should see a 4.7 RC soon and if no issues arise a final release a week or so after the RC and it will support AF drives with or without the jumper. Tom (limetech) has been bustin his hump this year!

I heard about P + Q parity being developed for unRAID that would allow any two drives to fail with no data loss. Was there any news on P + Q parity?

Dave

[icon123]

Thanks for the heads up about the AF drives. Luckily, I do my research and caught that since I have 3 of them. I have a brand new one preclearing in one of my other PCs for the past 10 hours (jumpered of course). The other thing that almost bit me and forced me to get a new MB was Gigabyte's HPA. Don't want to take a chance with that especially after I understood what could really happen from it.

BTW - you all seem to record to a dedicated drive (like I do and will) and then copy over the recordings either to a NAS or Unraid. Will Sage show your recordings from (2) different places so its transparent or will these copied recordings now display under the 'video' section?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by icon123

BTW - you all seem to record to a dedicated drive (like I do and will) and then copy over the recordings either to a NAS or Unraid. Will Sage show your recordings from (2) different places so its transparent or will these copied recordings now display under the 'video' section?

I have 15TB of recordings on my unRAID server showing up under recorded videos in SageTV. I did my moves the hard way. Add empty unRAID directory as import folder. Copy recordings to another folder (temp) on same drive in unRAID. Shut down SageTV. Move recordings on SageTV drives to temp folders not in import paths. Move recordings on unRAID from temp folder to unRAID import folder. Bring SageTV back up. I did this a drive at a time and between each I then moved the recordings out of "Archived" status back to "Regular" status. This allowed me to try to fix any that didn't maintain their links in SageTV. 98% of my files did on my multiple SageTV servers - just had 320 that didn't out of 10,000-20,000 videos and those were old - at least 3 year old recordings. So I expected some problems. If I'd just had recordings from SageTV V6.6 and up I probably would have been fine.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by davephan

I heard about P + Q parity being developed for unRAID that would allow any two drives to fail with no data loss. Was there any news on P + Q parity?

PQ is still out beyond 5.1. There is a lot of interest in this so once Tom gets to that point he may concentrate on it pretty hard. The roadmap is here for anyone that is interested.

Originally Posted by icon123

Thanks for the heads up about the AF drives. Luckily, I do my research and caught that since I have 3 of them. I have a brand new one preclearing in one of my other PCs for the past 10 hours (jumpered of course). The other thing that almost bit me and forced me to get a new MB was Gigabyte's HPA. Don't want to take a chance with that especially after I understood what could really happen from it.

BTW - you all seem to record to a dedicated drive (like I do and will) and then copy over the recordings either to a NAS or Unraid. Will Sage show your recordings from (2) different places so its transparent or will these copied recordings now display under the 'video' section?

Yep their location is transparent. I move my recordings into an import directory and they still show under recordings unless I force them to show as imports using BMT.

[icon123]

I sucessfully upgrade Sage to the new W7 build. Is there any problem having the os drive and recording drive spin down? Will it spin up ok to record without problems?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by icon123

The other thing that almost bit me and forced me to get a new MB was Gigabyte's HPA. Don't want to take a chance with that especially after I understood what could really happen from it.

I use a Gigabyte system board for my unRAID server. I briefly checked the unRAID forum, but did not find out exactly what the problem is with Gigabyte system boards. What is the problem and what is the workaround? I haven't noticed any problems yet. I like the Gigabyte system board because it has 10 sata ports plus two IDE ports. I can have 12 drives setup wihout adding any controller cards.

Dave

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by davephan

I use a Gigabyte system board for my unRAID server. I briefly checked the unRAID forum, but did not find out exactly what the problem is with Gigabyte system boards. What is the problem and what is the workaround? I haven't noticed any problems yet. I like the Gigabyte system board because it has 10 sata ports plus two IDE ports. I can have 12 drives setup wihout adding any controller cards.

Dave

HPA is Gigabytes modern version of the old 'restore the BIOS from the floppy disk' method of recovering from a corrupted BIOS or bad BIOS update. There is an option in the BIOS to allow you to save the BIOS code to a hard drive. The problem is you can't tell it what drive to save the BIOS to. So if it saves to the parity drive, your parity drive may no longer be the largest drive in your array and cause problems for your unRAID array. If you run unRAID, it's best to keep this option disabled. I think it's disabled by default on all more recent motherboards but may be enabled by default on some older motherboards. Check this post on the unRAID forums:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...54982#msg54982

[icon123]

Originally Posted by davephan

I use a Gigabyte system board for my unRAID server. I briefly checked the unRAID forum, but did not find out exactly what the problem is with Gigabyte system boards. What is the problem and what is the workaround? I haven't noticed any problems yet. I like the Gigabyte system board because it has 10 sata ports plus two IDE ports. I can have 12 drives setup wihout adding any controller cards.

Dave

Pretty much what Jason said. Read through that link he posted it definetly explains what could happen. My Gigabyte MB was new in 3/09 and HPA is not able to be turned off. However more recent versions of that board is. The board is still being sold today. My newer quad core board is able to be turned off and is by default, but that board is not going to be used for unraid.

I was preclearing a few of my drives to use in unraid. These were previously being used in WHS. All 3 had HPA on them. Although, I didn't have to do anything to them since none of them will be used for parity, I decided to first remove HPA from them before preclearing them.

Definetly, take HPA VERY seriously. Bottom line, if you can't turn of HPA or it isn't disable by default, don't use it for unraid.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by icon123

I sucessfully upgrade Sage to the new W7 build. Is there any problem having the os drive and recording drive spin down? Will it spin up ok to record without problems?

I've been letting my drives spin down for years and (knock on wood) haven't had a problem yet. Just be aware that if you start playback of a recording on a spun down drive you get the spinning circle for a second or 2 as the drive spins up.