Replacing Recording Drives w/o Sage Noticing

[jillsy]

I have been using SageTV 6.6.2.218 for over 3 years and have had very few problems. However, I had one of my hard drives fail a few days ago and I realize I need to start replacing my drives and fans to keep my system healthy. I have a drive for Windows and Sage, and then 3 additional drives for recording. The drive labeled F failed and I replaced it with a similar drive which Windows assigned as F. I lost my recordings, of course, but Sage kept on recording to the drive normally without my having to make any changes to my recording directory assignments.

I have read through a few other posts and the FAQs section so I think I know what I want to do and how it will work out, but I wanted to confirm my theories here if possible. I have a SATA/USB adapter I plan to use to connect a new drive to my system. I will copy the entire contents of one of my recording drives to the new drive (all this with Sage and Sage Service closed). After the contents are copied, I will shut the system down and swap out the old drive with the new. I then expect the system to restart and Windows to assign the new drive the same letter as the old as it did for my recent F drive replacement (or I can change the assignment if necessary). Furthermore, I expect Sage to not even notice the change and keep on listing and playing the existing recorded shows normally.

Does that all sound correct and workable?

I'm not sure what I'll do about my boot drive yet. I'd rather not have to reinstall everything from scratch, so I'll have to research cloning to see if that's a viable option.

On a side note, since Sage recognized all the recordings on the F drive were gone, what will it do when it sees these shows as repeats in the future? Normally I delete shows and use the "Delete because it's the wrong recording" option when I want to delete a show and have Sage record it again in the future. I fear this situation caused Sage to simply see the show as deleted with no need to record it again.

Thanks in advance for any feedback. I really love Sage and want to keep my system running as long as possible.

[Fuzzy]

You don't have to worry about files still being at the same path. As long as they have the same filename, sage will update their location. You could, for instance, since you already HAVE a newer larger drive in there (F), simply move the recordings on G over to F, replace G, and run a rescan in sage. Sage will see the files disappear from G, see them appear on F, and update appropriately.

[jillsy]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

You don't have to worry about files still being at the same path. As long as they have the same filename, sage will update their location. You could, for instance, since you already HAVE a newer larger drive in there (F), simply move the recordings on G over to F, replace G, and run a rescan in sage. Sage will see the files disappear from G, see them appear on F, and update appropriately.

Thanks so much, Fuzzy. I had read about that in the FAQs (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30697). I also sort of discovered that "have Sage see the files are no longer on the old drive" thing when I replaced my F drive. Until I replaced it, the old drive was inaccessible, so Sage couldn't see it. Therefore, all recordings were still listed. Once I replaced the F drive, Sage could see the drive was empty and deleted the listings.

If I do what you suggest, I have to change advanced_video_file_recovery=false to advanced_video_file_recovery=true in the Sage.properties file, correct? That's what I read in the FAQs.

I believe I'm going to leave F as it is for now, though. I'm a little behind in my show viewing so the other drives are a bit full. Since F has so much empty space right now, Sage is recording to it every time. I'm going to let it bear the load for a bit until I get at least one other drive replaced. I don't want to tax the older drives too much. After that, though, I may do as you suggest to even things up a bit (i.e., move some files from other drives to the relatively empty F drive so Sage will again alternate among all drives).

[Fuzzy]

no, you shouldn't have to do the advanced file recovery settings. just initiate a manual scan from the setup menu.

[NetworkGuy]

I move files between drives all of the time with no problem.

I usually shut down SageTV, move the files and restart SageTV. When you restart SageTV, it automatically scans the drives.

You don't really need to shut it down, but I just like to play it safe.

[jillsy]

Thanks so much to you both, Fuzzy and NetworkGuy! I'm hoping to get to these maintenance/improvement tasks soon. Your advice has been very helpful and is much appreciated.

[Sparhawk6]

I have a question related to this thread. I have a hard drive failing. I deleted it from the options that Sage can record to, but Sage of course will continue to read the already-recorded shows.

How can I remove those shows from Sage? I want to remove them because they are mostly re-runs of Seinfeld. I have tried copying the files over to a different drive, but the drive is already in bad enough shape that the copies are failing. If I remove the shows from Sage, my Seinfeld re-run library will eventually build back up against because that show is in re-runs forever. So, how do I do that?

[jillsy]

Originally Posted by Sparhawk6

I have a question related to this thread. I have a hard drive failing. I deleted it from the options that Sage can record to, but Sage of course will continue to read the already-recorded shows.

How can I remove those shows from Sage? I want to remove them because they are mostly re-runs of Seinfeld. I have tried copying the files over to a different drive, but the drive is already in bad enough shape that the copies are failing. If I remove the shows from Sage, my Seinfeld re-run library will eventually build back up against because that show is in re-runs forever. So, how do I do that?

If I understand you correctly, you want to delete the shows from Sage's database so it won't read them from the failing drive and it will also record the shows again in order to restore your library of Seinfeld episodes. Is that correct?

If so, one alternative is to shut down Sage and the Sage service and format the dying drive in order to remove its contents. Hopefully the drive can handle a quick format. Then restart Sage and the Sage service so it can see that the drive is empty (i.e., the episodes no longer exist). That will remove the episodes from Sage's database and it will be as if those shows were never recorded. Make sure the Favorites settings for the shows in question are set to First Runs and Reruns.

I had a drive die a few months ago and I replaced it with a new, empty drive. The computer automatically assigned it the same drive letter as the former drive. When Sage saw the drive was empty, all the shows that were on the old drive disappeared from my Sage listings. I made sure all the Favorites settings were set to First Runs and Reruns. Since then, Sage has been re-recording all the lost shows whenever it sees them airing. If you erase the dying drive by formatting it, that will have the same effect as replacing it with an empty drive.

By the way, you can also do as I did (replace the drive with a new one). Just make sure it is assigned the same drive letter as the old drive so Sage will see it as the same drive and purge the shows from its database. The computer will most likely do this on its own unless you have another drive letter that hasn't been assigned and is lower alphabetically than the drive you are replacing.

I hope that make sense. I'm pretty tired, so maybe I'm just rambling incoherently.