Harddrive move successful!!

[jominor]

I've done it. I've moved the contents of 4 HDs (D,E,J,K) to 2x500g drives(D,E) in Sage. I lost a 250g I: drive before the move so those shows were lost.

Sage version is 5.0.2.90.

I shut down Sage.
Back up Sage directory.
Copied D: to I: (the new 500g drive).
Turned off D: and changed the drive of I: to D: and restarted Sage.
Success!
Repeat I: to E:. This would be the most straightforward.
I then copied J: to D: and K: to E:
Restart Sage.
Success!

So add another datapoint to the anecdotal list of people who'ved moved shows to other drives with other drive letters.

[Update]
I found 10 shows that didn't move.
I was able to get about 3 off them by just turning off the archive then turning it back on.
Another 2 of them just moved mysteriously from an archived to an unarchived state. This is dangerous, of course, because since they weren't manual, Sage could have deleted them.
The remaining 5 was still being referenced as being on the J: or K: drive, so I took a drive, made it J:. Moved the shows to it. Bounced Sage and the shows were playable. I shutoff Sage and copied them to the D: drive and started Sage and they moved.

Repeat for the K: ones.

One more thing. I *always* shutdown Sage(GUI and service) before copying!

[Fluffdaddy]

I was thinking about moving my five drives to two but was afraid

thanks

[Lucas]

Nice!

I tried to do a similar move but failed!
I ended up creating a mapped drive on the bigger disk that had the drive letter of the old drive.....

[stevech]

This should be a #1 new feature wish list item.

Changing drives should be a no-brainer if Sage did it well.

As is, it's like a car with no jack with which to fix a flat tire.

[tawpgk]

This has been a PITA with me as well. I successfully moved from a 600gb raid to a 1TB raid a few days ago. I mapped the drives on another computer and did the copy over to them 5 partitions from and to, so that it would correlate to the drive letters when i installed them on the server machine. Not too bad.

But i really got hosed the first time i did this a year ago, when i mistakenly took the import function as a recovery of the file information from a disk that had sage recodings and reload it into the main sage db. So when i created the new machine in a different layout, i was screwed when the db was referencing locations that were no longer valid.

What is SORELY needed is an off line utility that can manage the db for global changes from one directory to another. Not that it needs to do the move, just to update the corresponding fields in the database. Also, It would be extremely helpful to be able to edit the show name field if the EPG got it wrong, and not just have to delete it/ or live with it with the wrong name. It doesn't happen a lot, but often enough to be a PITA. Kind of frustrating taping a cooking show for example when they are discussing something else when u want to find a particular type of dish.

Also while I'm waxing/venting, I think it would be much easier to manage the files for 'favorites' if they were stored in sub folders based on either the name of the favorite show, or even more hierarchically, the name of a user supplied category and name (either taken from the show or user supplied). When dealing with huge archives of files, storage management becomes a serious issue, and when you can buy 1TB of storage for $250 at newegg, we will have huge archives.

Please give the above some serous thought. Since you are in there making changes to the directory processing already from the bugs i found with the client, maybe you can take it to the next level and make Sage more manageable and maybe even give it a performance boost as a welcome side effect.

I realize overall you probably want to make the interface as easy as possible to reach the greatest number of people, but for those that need to manage the data, an off line utility and an option at least for 'advanced storage architecture/management' (even if only on the command line startup) would be a great boon.

Thanks for listening if you have made it this far. LOL

Tom

[RobJ]

Having lost many recordings in the past, I have my own method now for moving large groups of recordings between drives. The method below will seem elementary to computer professionals, but may be helpful to others.

As most know, a 'Move' is actually a 'Copy' followed by a 'Delete' of the original, so I used that to create a safe and confidence-building procedure.

In SageTV, make sure that the source and destination folders are setup in Video Recording Directories. Then using your favorite file-manager, preferably a 2-pane one like Total Commander, create a temporary folder on the destination drive, and another on the source drive, then select and copy all of the desired recordings from the source directory to the temp directory on the destination drive. Optionally, do a file compare to ensure an accurate copy (in Total Commander: highlight the new copies, call Synchronize directories, compare by content only, don't actually sync!).

Now shut down SageTV completely. In your file-manager, move the selected recordings in the source folder to the temporary folder on the source drive. This should only be a few clicks, and a few seconds. Now move the files in the temporary folder on the destination drive to the destination folder, again should only be a few clicks and a few seconds. If you don't already have a daily backup of your wiz.bin, then make one now. (You really should be making an automatic daily backup of wiz.bin and sage.properties.)

Now restart SageTV and check for successful access to all of the moved recordings. When you are completely confident that everything is fine, then delete the recordings in the temporary folder on the source drive. Wait a few days if you like.

You can revert back by: shutting down SageTV, deleting or moving the recordings from the destination folder, restoring the recordings on the source drive to the source folder, restoring wiz.bin and sage.properties, and restarting SageTV.

The original poster had problems with a few recordings requiring extra or repeated effort to complete the move. I too used to have problems like that, with earlier versions, but not since upgrading SageTV. I strongly recommend using the very latest version, currently 6.1.9.

This method moves a large group of recordings and only requires shutting down SageTV for a couple of minutes. I have another method that doesn't require shutting SageTV down at all, but is only for dealing with individual recordings, whether moving them to another drive, Quickstream-fixing them, editing them, compressing them, or just reloading them to fix timeline problems. I'll leave it for another post though.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by RobJ

Having lost many recordings in the past, I have my own method now for moving large groups of recordings between drives. The method below will seem elementary to computer professionals, but may be helpful to others.

As most know, a 'Move' is actually a 'Copy' followed by a 'Delete' of the original, so I used that to create a safe and confidence-building procedure.

In SageTV, make sure that the source and destination folders are setup in Video Recording Directories. Then using your favorite file-manager, preferably a 2-pane one like Total Commander, create a temporary folder on the destination drive, and another on the source drive, then select and copy all of the desired recordings from the source directory to the temp directory on the destination drive. Optionally, do a file compare to ensure an accurate copy (in Total Commander: highlight the new copies, call Synchronize directories, compare by content only, don't actually sync!).

Now shut down SageTV completely. In your file-manager, move the selected recordings in the source folder to the temporary folder on the source drive. This should only be a few clicks, and a few seconds. Now move the files in the temporary folder on the destination drive to the destination folder, again should only be a few clicks and a few seconds. If you don't already have a daily backup of your wiz.bin, then make one now. (You really should be making an automatic daily backup of wiz.bin and sage.properties.)

Now restart SageTV and check for successful access to all of the moved recordings. When you are completely confident that everything is fine, then delete the recordings in the temporary folder on the source drive. Wait a few days if you like.

You can revert back by: shutting down SageTV, deleting or moving the recordings from the destination folder, restoring the recordings on the source drive to the source folder, restoring wiz.bin and sage.properties, and restarting SageTV.

The original poster had problems with a few recordings requiring extra or repeated effort to complete the move. I too used to have problems like that, with earlier versions, but not since upgrading SageTV. I strongly recommend using the very latest version, currently 6.1.9.

This method moves a large group of recordings and only requires shutting down SageTV for a couple of minutes. I have another method that doesn't require shutting SageTV down at all, but is only for dealing with individual recordings, whether moving them to another drive, Quickstream-fixing them, editing them, compressing them, or just reloading them to fix timeline problems. I'll leave it for another post though.

My only question is how did you do anything in a few seconds. Perhaps it is my enclosures, USB2, but it takes a few minutes to move 1 3gig files. It took hours to copy the contents of a nearly full 200g drive to a 500g drive.

[stevech]

this is all so absurd.

Sage must fix the product.

Not sure the procedure above, esp. the revert, can assure that the wiz.bin history will not be destroyed for absent recordings, as it seemingly is in v5.

[tawpgk]

Originally Posted by RobJ

Having lost many recordings in the past, I have my own method now for moving large groups of recordings between drives. The method below will seem elementary to computer professionals, but may be helpful to others.

--snip


Now restart SageTV and check for successful access to all of the moved recordings. When you are completely confident that everything is fine, then delete the recordings in the temporary folder on the source drive. Wait a few days if you like.

--snip

Maybe I'm missing something in this simplicity, but where are you looking in Sage for successful access? For example, if I move files that were recorded in directory E:\ and moved them to H:\ where are you seeing the moved files? The entries in the wiz.bin database still point to E:\ since that is where it knew them to be recorded at. Unless I'm missing a new feature that rebuilds the wiz.bin file based on what is currently on the recording directories, this will not solve the problem. I certainly got hosed on this when the hundreds of files that I saved as archived were orphaned after moving files the first time around. That was in version 5 however, so maybe things have changed. Also maybe its another side effect from the bugs I found with using the root directory for an import directory (to be fixed in 6.2 allegedly).

The only way i could see them is through the import directories, and then it was an unholy mess as they were just listed individually and not grouped by show name. Even still in V6 I have orphaned recordings left over from that first screwup, so I am led to believe that it does not dynamically rebuild the database (see pic).

If import actually did "import" the files into the archived 'area', it would solve my issue greatly. There is a watched flag, maybe the answer is to just add an archive flag when you go through the list of import directories - better yet have an option to set all imported files (not DVD images) as archive to re-integrate them back where they should be.

I'm don't know how long you have been using sage, or to what extent you are using it or archiving shows, but this is a very long process and not just a few minute deal if you have a large amount of recordings to manage. Plus you need the extra storage for the temp location and that is not so easy when you are moving / migrating 600gb of recordings.

Please tell me where I'm wrong here, I would appreciate it if I were. As a computer professional for 30 years, maybe these new-fangled pc's have got me .

Regards,

Tom

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by tawpgk

Maybe I'm missing something in this simplicity, but where are you looking in Sage for successful access? For example, if I move files that were recorded in directory E:\ and moved them to H:\ where are you seeing the moved files? The entries in the wiz.bin database still point to E:\ since that is where it knew them to be recorded at.

A few comments:

Don't move recordings while SageTV is running.

After moving files, if you get rid of drive E before SageTV is allowed to start and see that the files are no longer in that location, then it can't see the recordings somewhere else. This is done so that SageTV doesn't just dump its list of files when a network drive goes offline, for example.

If you absolutely can't recreate the path to an old recording location, simply delete the recording in the SageTV UI -- make sure you are deleting the one pointing to a file that doesn't exist. That will free it up to see the recording again when you move it to another recoridng dir after the fake deletion.

This, and other things, are covered in the old FAQ on this topic.

- Andy

[tawpgk]

Ok Andy,

I am not sure why i got so screwed last year then. I'm sure I didn't do the move while STV was running.

Is there a way to get those orphaned shows listed in the import view in to the sage archive or main recording folder? There are no entries in the db for those shows, is there a way to force them into it?

[sandor]

My method of moving recordings is:

1) add new drive as a recording drive in the server
2) shutdown Sage
3) move all recording to the new drive
4) restart Sage and remove the old recording drive from Sage's list of drives


I swear this is the way i have always done it, since v 4, and i havent had a problem. The biggest problem is waiting for GBs of HD files to copy over, even with SATA drives. But as long as i always make sure Sage is shutdown when i make the move of files, i havent lost any.

[RobJ]

Originally Posted by jominor

My only question is how did you do anything in a few seconds. Perhaps it is my enclosures, USB2, but it takes a few minutes to move 1 3gig files. It took hours to copy the contents of a nearly full 200g drive to a 500g drive.

I'm sorry, I obviously wasn't clear above. The physical copy DOES take a long time, but it happens 'in the background'. I start the copy of multiple recordings and then continue with what ever else I want to do, including use of SageTV. Because the copying is FROM a Sage recording directory TO a temp directory unknown to SageTV, SageTV is unaffected, doesn't even know about it.

Although the physical COPY is long, the MOVEs are very fast. As you probably know, a move between 2 different drives is different than a move between 2 locations on the same drive. Moving a 100 gigabyte file from one folder to another folder on the same drive is essentially instantaneous, because the physical contents of the file aren't moved at all, only the directory entry is moved from one folder to another. That is what my method takes advantage of. If I could give an example, of moving some Heroes recordings (using pseudo DOS):

let S: be the original source drive
let S:\Videos be the original SageTV recording directory
let N: be a new destination drive
let N:\Videos be a new SageTV recording directory
VERY IMPORTANT! Both S:\Videos and N:\Videos must exist and must be included in SageTV Detailed Setup:Video Recording Directories, BEFORE shutting down SageTV

md S:\Temp
md N:\Temp
xcopy S:\Videos\Heroes*.* N:\Temp ;; takes a long time
shutdown SageTV
backup wiz.bin & sage.properties, if not already done
move S:\Videos\Heroes*.* S:\Temp ;; takes a few seconds
move N:\Temp\*.* N:\Videos ;; takes a few seconds
restart SageTV

When SageTV starts, it scans all of the Video Recordings Directories. If it finds a recording in a new location, and it can both see the original location, and see that it no longer exists there, it updates its database (wiz.bin) with the new path. This can be confirmed by going to Sage Recordings and playing the video. The path change can be confirmed by checking Detailed Info of the video within SageTV (can be hard to find) and within Nielm's SageTV Web interface.

The idea is very simple, I've just separated the physical copy from the 'logical' moves that affect SageTV.

Originally Posted by stevech

Not sure the procedure above, esp. the revert, can assure that the wiz.bin history will not be destroyed for absent recordings, as it seemingly is in v5.

I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to as 'absent recordings'.

As to v5, I've been developing my workaround's since SageTV v2.1, when I used Win98, and suffered most of my lost recordings. Every time I added a drive or logical partition, drive letters would change and recordings would be lost. I *think* I've been using the current method since v4, possibly early v5 betas, and yes, like Jominor above I've had inconsistent results at times, with earlier versions. But I believe it has been absolutely successful since possibly v5.04?, definitely with v6. I don't consider myself an authority, please let me know if this doesn't work for you.

Originally Posted by tawpgk

Maybe I'm missing something in this simplicity, but where are you looking in Sage for successful access? For example, if I move files that were recorded in directory E:\ and moved them to H:\ where are you seeing the moved files? The entries in the wiz.bin database still point to E:\ since that is where it knew them to be recorded at. Unless I'm missing a new feature that rebuilds the wiz.bin file based on what is currently on the recording directories, this will not solve the problem. I certainly got hosed on this when the hundreds of files that I saved as archived were orphaned after moving files the first time around. That was in version 5 however, so maybe things have changed. Also maybe its another side effect from the bugs I found with using the root directory for an import directory (to be fixed in 6.2 allegedly).

The only way i could see them is through the import directories, and then it was an unholy mess as they were just listed individually and not grouped by show name. Even still in V6 I have orphaned recordings left over from that first screwup, so I am led to believe that it does not dynamically rebuild the database (see pic).

If import actually did "import" the files into the archived 'area', it would solve my issue greatly. There is a watched flag, maybe the answer is to just add an archive flag when you go through the list of import directories - better yet have an option to set all imported files (not DVD images) as archive to re-integrate them back where they should be.

I'm don't know how long you have been using sage, or to what extent you are using it or archiving shows, but this is a very long process and not just a few minute deal if you have a large amount of recordings to manage. Plus you need the extra storage for the temp location and that is not so easy when you are moving / migrating 600gb of recordings.

I think I've partly answered you in my answer to Jominor. If not, let me know.

I don't use archiving or importing, have wanted everything in Sage Recordings. I do have a lot of recordings in the Import Library, but every single one of them BELONGS in my Sage Recordings list. Their database info was lost by Sage long ago, along with the ability to link them to their 'Watched' history. There is a way to re-import them into Sage Recordings using Nielm's excellent Web Interface, but you cannot re-link them to their lost Episode number, and so cannot link them to the correct 'Watched' history, as far as I know. It also takes way too long for a hundred or so recordings.

As a side note, it has always completely baffled me why the individual paths have to be stored in the database. Clearly, SageTV on startup is scanning all of the recording directories and determining where each and every recording is currently located. The full filenames and components of the filenames are unique. So why should it matter where we move the files while SageTV is shut down? I know I am fallible, so perhaps there are internal limitations I've never thought of, or strange contractual obligations with the Program Guide data provider, or it's a programming relic from a past code base? I would like to recommend the removal of this limitation. A built-in file manager with copy/move capabilities would also be nice, as others have requested.

[tawpgk]

Ok Thanks RobJ,

That is clear now. Perhaps I did not put the new drive in the recording beforehand. Still, the storage administration aspect can be improved so that you cant hose yourself, and if you do there is some sort of utility to fix it up.

Tom

[Opus4]

The recording details could get lost prior to v6.1 if the file was not found in any current recoridng dir. This would cause the files to be imported once they were moved back into another recording dir, since there was no show to match it to, and that is probably what you experienced. As the FAQ points out, there is a property to set to prevent this for versions prior to v6.1, and v6.1 now retains the show details for any recorded show so it should no longer matter if a recording isn't seen temporarily.

- Andy

[tawpgk]

Ok, but can it be coaxed to accept into the db archive or recording list shows on disk that are not in the database? since i basically started over when i had that problem. I deleted most of them since i thought they were hopeless causes, but there were 11 still out there that i would like to get back in the archive somehow even if it did not have all if the info.

Thanks
Tom

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by tawpgk

Ok, but can it be coaxed to accept into the db archive or recording list shows on disk that are not in the database?

Other than what was mentioned above about manually entering some info via the web server, no -- once the show's details are out of the EPG database, it is no longer there to connect the recording to it.

- Andy

[tawpgk]

Thanks to all for the better understanding on how this works. If i were still in the mainframe world, I would ask if I could superzap the wiz.bin but those days are long gone.

this provides a workable solution so i don't get hosed again. If there is anywhere that i can put in feature requests, I would still like to see it stored more hierarchically by show name, etc. so that they can be managed more discretely, rather basically one file or all. From Rob's clear example of wildcarding the files to be moved, there can be a more manual way of managing file locations, albeit it does not direct the way sage allocates files.

Anyway this has been a good lesson for me.

STV does rock! Thanks again,

Tom

[mattdcknsn]

Thank you very much for this thread, I was trying to read up on how to migrate shows around and once I read this I was all set. I was able to go from 5 different recording directories down to 1. Thank you all again.

[robinson]

I haven't been to these forums for a while, and I have to admit that I am few versions behind on SageTV. But I find it completely unbelievable that this thing about moving files is still an issue.

So Sage can now play YouTube. But users still have to go through this nonsense to move files? What exactly are the priorities of SageTV? I didn't buy upgrades because there are only very few features that are worth it for me. A built-in way to actually manage my video library would be worth it. But no, SageTV will rather invest in playing YouTube -- something my computer has been doing without any problem since You Tube started!!!

Every bloody application these days wants to be my MEDIA HUB. Stop it please. If I need a media hub I'll buy one. Recording of television shows used to be the bread and butter of SageTV. What happened? And why can't Sage finally fix the very basics instead of going in all directions?