Best Practice For Adding Storage?

[NickBurns]

Is there a best practice support article for adding more storage?

I found that the pinned post of Migrating Channels DVR has a link on "Move your recordings to another location or drive on the same computer", but that link is 404'd.

Here's my scenario:
My current 14TB USB recording drive has ~4TB of space left.
I'd like to setup another 14TB drive as my new recording drive and maintain the original drive as a library/storage of currently recorded content.

What's the best way to accomplish this?

[racameron]

Moving DVR to smaller but faster drive

There are many different posts about this exact question. (I did a quick search and found at least 5; of course I know what I was looking for, so maybe not a great example. "Additional storage" will get you there.) In short: Disable the DVR from the web UI Add your old DVR directory on the external drive as additional storage Change your DVR directory to a location on your internal drive Re-enable the DVR That's it; the new location will be used by the DVR for everything, and if it can't fin…

[marcuscthomas]

I routinely move movies/shows out of my Channels DVR storage and into my private library. Since Channels is pointed to my library, it doesn't care whether the videos are in its own DVR directory or in my private library. My Channels DVR drive stays small. You can add multiple library locations to Channels (or Plex or Emby or Jellyfin or Playon for that matter) so you can just keep stacking storage.

[JT-DFW]

As a former TV hoarder, I would suggest that you delete content that you are unlikely going to watch again, which should be the majority. If that isn't an option, then you can use Stablebit Drivepool where you can have several hard drives appear as a single drive, and add and delete them dynamically (as well as have automatic duplication of content in case of drive failures) - this is assuming you are running Windows, by the way.

[chDVRuser]

@JT-DFW

As a former TV hoarder

Congratulations.
Somebody else (besides me) will want to watch that, better record it while it's available!
Looks interesting, I'll record it and watch it later.
...

I'm almost to the point I use skip/FF/FR to watch recordings and trash them.
But there are a few still that are keepsakes.
Life is 2 short

[NickBurns]

If I understand this correctly,

1. To disable DVR, I just unclick the check mark next to DVR under Basic Setup, correct?
2. Add my old Directory as a Local Content, or do you mean I just add the new USB drive as a new storage location and then point to it as the DVR folder under Basic Setup and leaving the old one as a storage path?

[tmm1]

@NickBurns

Add my old Directory as a Local Content

Local content would be used for things not already in the DVR database, like dvd rips and recordings from other systems.

@NickBurns

I just add the new USB drive as a new storage location and then point to it as the DVR folder under Basic Setup and leaving the old one as a storage path?

Correct, you would put your new drive as the new default storage location, and then leave the old one as a secondary storage path

[racameron]

@NickBurns

Add my old Directory as a Local Content, or do you mean I just add the new USB drive as a new storage location and then point to it as the DVR folder under Basic Setup and leaving the old one as a storage path?

Add your old location under Additional Storage, and change the DVR local to the new drive.

[Jay1987]

@JT-DFW

As a former TV hoarder

Quitter.

On serious note, i wish i could stop boarding content. Im NEVER going to watch it.

The stanlebit is a good suggestion. Never heard of it. Ill have to look into it