Additional Storage Locations for Channels DVR Recordings

Just set the new one as the DVR location and the old one as the additional storage location.

I think you have to copy/move over the Database or else you will lose the recordings.

I now have two 10TB drives (I know, I really need to learn not to be a packrat) and have moved about 3TB to the new drive. Movies are pretty straightforward, I just move everything over as new recordings are coming in. TV shows are a bit more complex. I dragged folders of shows over, but now with new epsiodes they are getting recorded on the old drive and I can't any longer just drag folders over. What is the easiest way to manage all of this for those that have multiple drives for a while? Do you just do selective pruning, or do you have something setup to automate it? I'm running on a Mac Mini.

If you want to automate transfers between two locations, you might want to look into cron and rsync.

I am on windows so I use Robocopy to move my recordings over by folder to my secondary location when nothing is recording or processing. I have it scheduled at night ... it will check every 5 minutes to see if anything is recording or processing before moving files.

:loop
timeout 300
CD /d "%~dp0"
del "%~dp0dvr"

wget.exe "http://127.0.0.1:8089/dvr"

findstr /I /C:"Recording" "%~dp0dvr"
set recording=%ERRORLEVEL%
if %recording% EQU 0 goto loop
findstr /I /C:"Processing" "%~dp0dvr"
set recording=%ERRORLEVEL%
if %recording% EQU 0 goto loop

ROBOCOPY "R:\ChannelsDVR\TV\Criminal Minds" "\\EDSYNOLOGY\Public\ChannelsDVR3\TV\Criminal Minds" /move /COPY:DT /minage:0 /e /R:2 /W:2
ROBOCOPY "R:\ChannelsDVR\TV\Star Trek The Next Generation" "\\EDSYNOLOGY\Public\ChannelsDVR3\TV\Star Trek The Next Generation" /move /COPY:DT /minage:0 /e /R:2 /W:2
ROBOCOPY "R:\ChannelsDVR\TV\Star Trek Deep Space Nine" "\\EDSYNOLOGY\Public\ChannelsDVR3\TV\Star Trek Deep Space Nine" /move /COPY:DT /minage:0 /e /R:2 /W:2
ROBOCOPY "R:\ChannelsDVR\TV\Law & Order Criminal Intent" "\\EDSYNOLOGY\Public\ChannelsDVR3\TV\Law & Order Criminal Intent" /move /COPY:DT /minage:0 /e /R:2 /W:2

exit

Would this rsync command do the trick? I could then create different versions of it for the TV shows that I want to move. Does cron have a way to check for if files are active and/or is rsync smart enough to leave active files alone?

rsync -r --remove-source-files /Volumes/Exteral1/DVR/Movies/ /Volumes/External2/Movies/

rsync -r --remove-source-files /Volumes/External1/DVR/TV/Seinfield/ /Volumes/External/2/DVR/TV/Seinfield/

Implementations may differ, so it's best to check the man pages for your local version.

Well rather than search on Google for all the rsync and cron options on a Mac, was hoping to get some tips from users here that are already doing it and save quite a bit of time.

That's why I suggested your local man pages. From a command line, try man cron or man rsync to get the documentation for the version installed on your system.

(My systems are Linux and OpenBSD, so I'm not certain which versions Apple ships with macOS.)

Follow timstephens24 advice

Yeah it can be a little complicated since you'll have to run a find command to say for example find /path/channels -type f -mmin +120 -exec rsync etc.....

If you have Channels set to create an edl file you could look for the edl file and then if you find an edl file next to the video move the video file over...

There's a few ways to do it, but the easiest is to just leave what you have where it is and then set the DVR location to your new external and your old location as an additional storage location. Then you can copy everything over and just delete it from your old location after the copy is done and you don't have to worry about finding new items and moving it.

If you're making a new drive your primary recording storage, you should copy over the Images, Database, Logs, and Streaming folders from the old drive to the new. Those should be fairly small and quick to move.

It is not the end of the world if you don't though, because the preview images and other cache data will be regenerated.

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I think that calls for a new article :duck:
and maybe a spell check on manageing

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Thanks for all the ideas. Its too late for me to just make the new drive the main drive, as I've moved about 3TB over already. I can use rsync to move files, which seems to work better than just manually copying it. My concern is what happens if there is a recording in flight when I do this. I'm guessing that it will copy the partial file over, but because its open that it won't be able to delete the old one and I'll end up with two copies of that file... one on the new drive that is corrupt, and one on the old drive that is good. What will Channels DVR do if this happens?

I have so many passes going that there is never a time that recording is idle unless I could manually pause it. What I've been doing when manually copying is to avoid the directories that I see have recordings going on, and keep the copy short enough to minimize the chance that a new recording will start while its running. Not exactly easy to automate so for now I"ll just go in every few weeks and manually update. Would be great if I could setup something on cron but not seeing how that would work... I know enough to be dangerous with this stuff.

Adding a secondary storage path, can i just drag and drop on my mac os desktop to the new directory the files or shows that i want to host on that other external drive?

You need to move them, not copy them... so you have to hold the function key on a Mac to make it a move. But after you do that once, then you can't really do it again because the directories for the shows will already exist.

Please add a Sports section to the additional locations. I record football games, and they are 4 hours plus. Need a special place for these monsters. Thanks.

There is only TV and Movies. Sports are a genre of TV shows. They will get filtered into a folder for the show so if the type of sporting event groups that way then you might get lucky.

(Sorry in advance for the revival)

Has anyone on Linux/MacOS tried a simple symlink to accomplish this? I would love to move some older stuff "offline" and use an SSD for the stuff i keep up with.

In my Linux container, I wanted my Data directory elsewhere and found a symlink did not work, but a bind mount did. Have not tried a bind mount within the content directory structure so unsure if it works there, but potentially worth a try.