Hard Drive Upgrades/Moves - Moving recordings between drives

#1

I know there are topics here about adding hard drives, one I even posted myself years ago. However, I still have a few questions that I can't seem to find the answer to.

Here is my current setup:

  1. ChannelsDVR Running on a Windows 11 Server.
  2. I have 3 internal hard drives, 1 used for new recordings and 2 used for additional storage.
  3. I have 3 external USB drives used as backup drives (they are a backup of the 3 internal drives).
  4. 2 of the drives I use for additional storage are mostly full of shows, but still have room to add shows to.

Here is what I am looking to do:

  1. My current drive I use for recordings is filling up. I'd like to move this drive to be another additional storage drive so I can install a new hard drive for future/current recordings.

  2. I'd like to move all 3 other additional storage drives to my newly acquired 6-bay NAS. I will also shuck the drives from my external USB backup drives so I can install them in the NAS in a RAID 1 configuration to have some data redundancy. Yes, I know RAID 1 isn't a true backup and that I may also need to cut the 3.3v signal from the shucked USB drives.

  3. On my existing additional storage drives, I would like to fill up the unused space until they are full. How can I copy channelsdvr shows from one drive to another without messing up the database and the expected location of the shows?

My main concern with the above is changing drive letters, moving local channelsdvr storage to the NAS (channelsdvr will still be running on my windows server), and copying shows from one drive to another to make full use of the space (and how this could corrupt the database).

@tmm1 or anyone who has experience making these types of changes, I would sure appreciate some guidance. Thank you.

-Doug

#2

You should move your existing recordings into this section:
Local Content Import your existing media library into the DVR

Create separate folders for Movies and for Shows. You can drag the folder structure over so it's easy. Then scan and you are good to go.

#3

No, the existing data should be added as an additional storage location, and the new drive as the new DVR location.

Adding your existing recordings back via local content should only be a fallback, because it messes with the recording database.

Better yet, there is an entire article about moving to new drives and/or computers:

#4

He plans to move the drives to his nas which will wipe them. In the long run that is a much bet
ter setup.

#5

Thank you for the suggestion. Here's the issue, the current internal drives I have are 8TB, 10TB, and 14TB. I can't copy all of this data to Local Content as it exceeds the capacity of any one hard drive.

Thank you. This does answer some of my questions, but not all of them.

Do you think these steps will work?

  1. Remove the additional storage locations from ChannelsDVR.
  2. Remove the above internal drives and put them in my NAS. As @Morris_Altman noted, this will wipe the data.
  3. Once the drives are in the NAS and completely wiped, I will use my USB Backup drives to copy the data back over to the NAS.
  4. Once the files are copied back over to the NAS, then I will shuck the external USB drives and install them in the NAS in Raid 1. This should mirror the data on each drive.
  5. Follow the steps that @racameron noted and add the NAS drives as an additional storage location in ChannelsDVR.
  6. Install a new internal hard drive in my ChannelsDVR server to act as the primary drive. I will use an external USB connect drive to use as a backup for this primary drive.

If the above works, then I can get the drives moved around correctly. However, it still doesn't clarify how I can fill-up (use all the space) on the drives I will be moving the the NAS. For example, my 14TB hard drive is only using 12TB. I'd like to copy some of the existing recordings to this 14TB drive so I use up almost all the space. I'm worried that this might mess up the database though.

#6

You don't have to store any media on your server. I have all of mine on my NAS and the server accesses the NAS via SMB shares.
My local content:
Movie Sources
\Nas\dvr\Inported_Files\Movies
TV Sources
\Nas\dvr\Inported_Files\TV

This makes adding space simple as you just increase the size of the share on you NAS.

I also make daily copies of my database to my NAS and this has saved me.

#7

Interesting, a couple of questions for you...

  1. Do you notice any negative side effects from having your recordings play from your NAS. Things like longer show loading times or fast forward/skipping issues? Channels works great when using a local drive, but I am not sure if the NAS would be a noticeable bottleneck.

  2. Do you backup any of your recordings (other than just the database)? If so, are you using RAID or some other type of backup? I have some limitations on my NAS that won't allow me to modify volumes over 16TB. I guess I can create them as new, but never modify them above that limit.

#8

Playback starts about instantly playing back from my NAS. Skipping delays are usually caused by slow client communications. Both my WiFI clients and wired clients skip commercials very quickly. If you have a 1-Gb or faster link to your NAS you will not see a difference.

I don't back up my recordings. They are stored on a pair of SATA SSDs. My NAS is TrueNAS and I don't have that size restriction for increasing size. If you hit the 16-TB limit on your NAS, you could build another volume that's larger, copy everything over to the new volume and then just change the share pointer on your NAS. I've used this the copy method and while it takes some time it's easy to do.

1 Like
#9

Thanks. With my internal drives I don't experience any delays or performance issues. Even though my NAS is older, it has two 1GB ports that I have connected to my Gigabit Switch (in load balancing mode). I did notice when I was copying large data over from my PC to the NAS that the transfer rate was only about 10-13MB/s (Bytes, not bits). Hopefully that wouldn't be a limiting factor.

That makes sense, I will give this some more thought.

#10

That transfer speed is about what I'd expect from 100-Mb connections. Are the NAS connections at 1-Gb as you are expecting? More than 1 stream could be a problem. Can you see the health of your hard drives in your NAS?

#11

I can see the health of the drives and they are all good. It also looks like my bonded Ethernet ports are connected at 1gbps...

1gbps
1gbps954×81 20.6 KB

Drives
Drives1417×175 37.6 KB

I guess I will have to do some more troubleshooting.

#12

How are the read speeds from you NAS?

#13

Around 500 Mbps. Something doesn't seem right.

#14

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