? About Moving Recordings to Another Drive

[geogecko]

I've read about problems, or a certain way to go about doing this...but I need to move some SageTV recordings around on my drives, but I don't want to lose any of the information that Sage uses to keep it in the recordings section of Sage, instead of in the imported videos section.

Basically, I've got a 250GB drive that is partitioned into two drives, a 30GB OS drive, and the rest, used for recordings.

I've recently decided to re-rip all my CD's using FLAC (I originally stored them all as MP3's on the 30GB drive, since I image that drive frequently), but as you can see, 30GB is hardly enough room for my collection of CD's, in FLAC.

So, I want to move all the recordings on the second partition to another drive in my system, repartition the 250GB drive into one partition, and probably change the 3 other drives in my system, to different drive letters.

Is this going to give Sage a fit if I do this?

[Opus4]

There is a FAQ for this (which probably needs some updating one of these years), but Q2 there still has the basic info: just shut down SageTV & move the recordings. Save your wiz.bin before doing anything & don't remove a recording dir until the files are all successfully moved.

If you change drive letters, SageTV needs to be able to see the old drive letter or else it won't be able to determine the files are no longer where they used to be -- map a drive letter if you need to. Q3 covers this one, I believe.

- Andy

[geogecko]

Thanks Andy, that should help out perfectly.

So, as for a procedure, does this look about right?

Currently
C: 30GB OS and Music Drive
D: 220GB Recordings
E: 250GB Recordings
F: 500GB Recordings
G: 500GB Recordings

Afterward
C: 250GB OS and Music Drive
D: 250GB Recordings
E: 500GB Recordings
F: 500GB Recordings

Procedure
1. Shutdown SageTV and Service.
2. Backup wiz.bin.
3. Move recordings from current D to E, F, & G (D is now empty).
4. Start SageTV and Service to allow Sage to see moved recordings.
5. Shutdown SageTV and Service.
6. Repartition C and D into just C.
7. Reletter E, F, & G to D, E, & F.
8. Map a drive from another PC to drive G.
9. Start SageTV and Service.
10. Change my import locations and recording directory locations in SageTV.
11. Remove mapped drive G.

Does that sound about right?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Proceedure
1. Shutdown SageTV and Service.
2. Backup wiz.bin.
3. Move recordings from current D to E, F, & G (D is now empty).
4. Start SageTV and Service to allow Sage to see moved recordings.
5. Shutdown SageTV and Service.
6. Repartition C and D into just C.
7. Reletter E, F, & G to D, E, & F.
8. Map a drive from another PC to drive G.
9. Start SageTV and Service.
10. Change my import locations and recording directory locations in SageTV.
11. Remove mapped drive G.

You may have an issue from step 7, unless the base recording dir is the same name on all the drives already. If you reletter & they all have different names, you might end up w/no recordings found since there would be no valid recording dirs when you restart SageTV.

Before step 9, you could try editing the seeker/video_storage property and adjust each old rec dir to match its new location.

Step 2 is very important & I would add the properties files to that... and make another copy before each restart, just in case.

- Andy

[ke6guj]

My question would be, why do you need to change the drive letters on all your drives that you aren't really messing with? It seems that only C&D are the only ones phsyically being messed with, and that the data off of D is going elsewhere.

I'd just repartition C&D down to C and leave the rest of them alone. Leave drive D as an empty slot. Take the recordings off of D, create a temp D drive, and put them on one or more of the other drives. that way when you restart Sage, you only have 220gigs of data to resort, instead of 1500gigs to resort.

With a backed up wiz.bin, you could confirm that the move went correctly. Then if you needed to, you could start moving all the other drives around, 1 at a time, so that you could keep track of the backup wiz.bin for that move.

[geogecko]

Hmm...each drive has the first folder as MEDIA_D, MEDIA_E, etc., so I'm guessing that won't work out too well.

So your information about changing the seeker/video_storage property would basically do step 10, but without having to perform step 9, right?

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

My question would be, why do you need to change the drive letters on all your drives that you aren't really messing with? It seems that only C&D are the only ones phsyically being messed with, and that the data off of D is going elsewhere.

I'd just repartition C&D down to C and leave the rest of them alone. Leave drive D as an empty slot. Take the recordings off of D, create a temp D drive, and put them on one or more of the other drives. that way when you restart Sage, you only have 220gigs of data to resort, instead of 1500gigs to resort.

With a backed up wiz.bin, you could confirm that the move went correctly. Then if you needed to, you could start moving all the other drives around, 1 at a time, so that you could keep track of the backup wiz.bin for that move.

Makes since, and I guess I don't really need to have the D slot filled, it would just be logical.

What do you mean though, about moving all the other drives around, one at a time? So I have C, E, F, & G at this point...

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Makes since, and I guess I don't really need to have the D slot filled, it would just be logical.

Yup, if you dont' need the D slot filled, its the easiest.

What do you mean though, about moving all the other drives around, one at a time? So I have C, E, F, & G at this point

What I meant was, get the C&D issue fixed so that you have C,E,F&G, then you could move E to D, set up a temp E, Restart Sage and have it redo all the directory info for the files. Then, if it did it correctly, do it again for F and then G. A lot of time and effort, and plenty of chances for Sage to "orphan" some recordings into import files.

But, if all you care about is filling D, then just move G into D's spot. You don't need to shuffle them all down one spot like you stated in step 7.

[geogecko]

I think the easiest thing to do, is just leave a gap at D. I think that's what I go with for now...

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by geogecko

So your information about changing the seeker/video_storage property would basically do step 10, but without having to perform step 9, right?

Well, you would still have to do step 9 (start SageTV) eventually. But, you would edit teh properties file before restarting.

Another alternative -- do you really need to merge C & D? Why not just resize the partitions & leave D for music, some recordings, or whatever?

- Andy

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Well, you would still have to do step 9 (start SageTV) eventually. But, you would edit teh properties file before restarting.

Another alternative -- do you really need to merge C & D? Why not just resize the partitions & leave D for music, some recordings, or whatever?

- Andy

Good point. Instead of merging them, I could just transfer my music to D...

Why didn't I think of that? Then I could image both C and D.

Then I wouldn't have to resize the partitions at all, but I probably wouldn't want to have recordings on D, just because then I'd be backing up my recordings...

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Then I wouldn't have to resize the partitions at all, but I probably wouldn't want to have recordings on D, just because then I'd be backing up my recordings...

Does your image utility let you choose which dirs to copy?

Actually, I don't use my image app for the drives w/my music files... I simply have 3 complete copies on 3 different drives on 2 different systems. (I lost the drive once when I had 1 copy.)

- Andy

[geogecko]

Let me get this right, you have 6 copies of every music file? That seems a little much, to me. Are you using FLAC or something, because that would be a lot of space.

I am not positive, but I think that the image utility only allows you to select logical drives, not folders. I would just duplicate all my music on my study computer, but I plan on getting an HD camcorder soon, and that's going to be taking up a lot of space on it's own. I'll probably have dual 500GB drives setup as a RAID mirror array. Although, a better idea, might be to just buy an external 500GB drive, and use it as a backup, that way, if the power supply blows up both drives, I'll still have a backup (if I remove it after each backup)...

I guess the other problem I'm going to run into, is that an iPod won't hold very many (nor am I sure it even plays) FLAC files. I guess I could just have the FLAC files, and also a 192kbps MP3 stored...

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Let me get this right, you have 6 copies of every music file? That seems a little much, to me. Are you using FLAC or something, because that would be a lot of space.

No, I have 3 copies. Yes, the 3rd is overkill, since I really only needed a copy on 2 separate systems. Essentially, both systems play music locally. I'm using mp3, so it is 60 GB instead of 20GB total space used... 2 copies would be 40 GB & it would be that way regardless of whether I make a playable copy on 2 systems or backed up one to some other drive as an image.

The music backup will still take up about that much space because it won't compress much more & I figure it might as well be playable instead of sitting in some hard-to-access image file. Your decisions may vary.

- Andy

[geogecko]

All good points, including the backup of the music files. I guess you're right, that if I did a backup of music, I'd probably be better off just keeping two local copies, since it wouldn't compress much, and it take a heck of a lot longer to do an image...