Moving DVR to smaller but faster drive

[Skoot]

After doing some disk speed testing, I'd like to try moving my DVR from an external drive back to my Mac Mini. The issue I hope to resolve is a data bottleneck caused by my Frankenstein-like Thunderbolt 1 --> USB 3 --> WD My Passport 4 TB HDD. Despite the advertised 5GB transfer speed, I'm measuring less than 20Mbs read/write speed (sometimes much lower) on the external drive, while the internal drive gets us to 100Mbs

Problem: The external drive is almost full of video, and the internal drive only has 664 MB free.

So, how can I preserve my recorded video on the external drive, while moving the DVR function back to the Mac Mini HDD, which is much faster (with hopefully fewer stalls and interruptions)? Is there a way to do this without having to re-import and re-index the existing files?

[tmm1]

What do you mean by "move the dvr" exactly?

You don't want to move your recordings it sounds like. So what do you want to move?

[Skoot]

I want the streaming cache and any new recordings to go on the smaller, faster drive. I'd like to keep the old recordings on the external drive.

I'm hoping this will help with the unresolved stalling and interrupted recording problems I've been experiencing.

[racameron]

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:

1. Disable the DVR from the web UI
2. Add your old DVR directory on the external drive as additional storage
3. Change your DVR directory to a location on your internal drive
4. Re-enable the DVR

That's it; the new location will be used by the DVR for everything, and if it can't find a file for playback, it will now also look on the external drive.

[Skoot]

Thanks. I also did a search, but didn't find a specific answer to my question. I'll try what you wrote here.

UPDATE: This seems to work without any issues. Very easy to do!