Backup Channels DVR advice

[David_Heath]

I am preparing a backup server for all of my home pc's.

I want to be sure that I am backing up the correct items from my Channels DVR for when a drive failure occurs (in my 40+ years of dealing with computers, it's always when, not if).

• Should I be backing up the entire "dvr" folder?
• Should I just be backing up the "database" folder?
• Should I just be backing up the "TV", "Movies", etc folder(s)
• Confused? You won't be after this episode of ....

Sorry had to throw that last one in, only older sitcom viewers will get it!

[chDVRuser]

Depends on what you may want to "restore".
The database folder will let you restore the databases, but not the videos.
The TV and Movies folder will let you restore the recorded videos, but not the databases.

[babsonnexus]

See my experience and thoughts on this here:

Recovering from a Catastrophic Failure

Thought I'd share the experiences and terrors of my past week+ recovering from a complete and catastrophic failure of my server and backup external HDD within days of each other! Let my exhaustion and frustration be beautiful learning lessons for you, or at least schadenfreude if that is your thing. The Wonderful and Easy Installing a new Channel DVR on another machine and restoring from backup is as easy as could be. I had done some test runs in the past just to see, and was glad it worked ju…

[David_Heath]

After reading your story and chDVRuser, I am wondering if there is anything wrong with just backing up the entire DVR folder and subfolders including:
Database
Images
Imports
Logs
Movies
Streaming
TV

Space is not an issue, I have over 40TB of backup space availble for my various systems, with Channels only using 8 TB at this point, and everything else using less than 10 TB.

[chDVRuser]

@David_Heath

Database
Images
Imports
Logs
Movies
Streaming
TV

You don't need to back up all the directories, just these with an [x]
[x] Database
[x] Movies
[x] TV

Images (will get recreated)
Imports (only need to backup if you put imported media in there)
Logs (don't need, except for troubleshooting bad recordings)
Streaming (don't need to backup)

[babsonnexus]

@chDVRuser

Images (will get recreated)

Not if you upload images, then you need the subdirectory for that.

@David_Heath

Space is not an issue

Since space is not an issue, just take the whole parent directory. Like @chDVRuser said, if there are limitations, only some are needed, but if that's not a concern, just go for everything, can't hurt anything except time and storage!

Also, if you want to get an exact "this is where your setup is right now", you might want to get the data directory in the config directory:

The rest of that stuff is unimportant because it will all be created on a new install (aside from the old versions of the server).

[chDVRuser]

@babsonnexus

@chDVRuser

Images (will get recreated)

Not if you upload images, then you need the subdirectory for that.

Good point. Those would be in Images/uploads
The rest of the Images directory will be recreated.
preview-*.jpg and tmsimg/