Minor Grievance - Disk space calculation

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

I added two Storage Paths for Channels DVR to use. The first is Drive L which is a 14TB drive, and the second is Drive E which is a 12TB drive (see image)..

Storage Paths

If you look at my available disk space in Channels UI, it shows 12TB of available space. This is only the remaining space on drive L. It doesn't seem to be adding in drive E to that available space. It would be nice if it totaled the total available space allotted to Channels.

space available

#2

That is because Channels does not write to additional storage locations. Therefore, the free space on your E drive is irrelevant, because Channels won't ever write to it. Instead, the significant thing is only the free space on L, because that's where Channels will put new recordings.

#3

I guess I am confused. What happens when drive L fills up? Channels won't start recording things to drive E? What is the point of a second storage path then?

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#4

You have to start thinking like a techie in order to fully utilize Channels DVR. You won’t get far thinking like a tv user sitting on the couch, you’ll end up to a road block like this one.

The tv watching work flows on channels is not like your old cable box. It’s a balance.

#5

When L gets full, you'll need to delete some content, or add an additional drive. Additional storage paths are meant to allow you to off-load recordings from your primary DVR drive, freeing up space from your primary recording path, while still making your content accessible to Channels.

Basically, what you would do when your L drive fills up is:

  1. Attach and format a new drive to use with Channels
  2. From the DVR web UI, go to Settings > Basic Setup and un-check DVR
  3. From the path selector at that setting, choose your new drive (perhaps M?)
  4. Further down on the page, go to DVR Database > Storage Paths, and add your L drive as additional storage
  5. Go back up to Basic Setup > DVR and check the option to start the DVR server again

Now all new content will be saved to your new drive (M?), but content saved on both E and L will be available for Channels to access.

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#6

Ok, thank you. That is easy enough to do, but it would sure be nice if it were hands off once you add additional storage paths. In other words, channels would just automatically use the additional storage path if there wasn't enough space on the first/primary drive.

Not only could this be setup in advance, it would also prevent lost recordings from the primary drive being full.

#7

Chances are your operating system already can do this natively:

  • Windows has "Storage Spaces";
  • Linux has "LVM2";
  • FreeBSD/ZFS has "Zpools";
  • macOS does support APFS containers that span multiple disks, but I don't believe it's possible to dynamically add additional drives to an existing container.
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