External Storage

[elneckio]

If I add an external HDD through USB connection and map it to a drive as a video folder in configuration... will the SS database survive ok if the drive is sometimes not turned on and/or not connected ?

[WillP]

i'm not in this situation but I'l try to answer as best I can. My video folders are actually on a network drive so my situation is kinda similar. From my experience PVS will work fine when the drive is disconnected. Of course you don't want to try to record to it while it's disconnected. Also you don't want to put the timeshift buffer on it (if you use mpeg2).

Where you might run into a problem is when you reconnect the drive. You'll probably have to shut down PVS and restart it for it to see the files in the video folder.

Anyone who uses an external HD, feel free to comment.

Will

[Stefan]

I like to store my files on an external USB drive. If the drive is not turned on when Snapstream is started the files are not detected. Just as WillP mentioned, if I turn on the drive, I need to shut down Snapstream and restart it to see the files in the video folder.

[DonBonq]

I use a usb hard drive as my default folder. The SS database will survive if you start SS with the usb drive turned off, but, as others have noted, you will have to turn it on and restart SS to use them inside SS. I've also set another record drive in case I do a time shift and forget to turn on the usb drive.

[onwiththeshow]

Just found this thread because I'm thinking of adding an external USB 2 hard drive (never thought the internal 160 would fill up so quickly!). My question is whether there's any jerkiness or PQ decrease when files are run from the external drive.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Cayars]

You would want to use a USB2 or firewire external drive for best performance. I've got a couple external WD 250s and they work just as good as the internals do for BTV.

TIP: Instead of shutting down BTV and restarting it you can also just go into the web admin and remove and recreate the video folder on the external drive. Sometimes this is better especially if BTV happens to be recording, transcoding or doing anything else in the background.

Carlo

[tsandayu]

What I do, is the COMMON (default) record folder is on my internal drive, but all my other folders are on my NAS setup. Once a week or/so I move the recordings to their long-term folders, this keeps the internal drive clear to keep recording programs.

It would be nice if BTV had an autoarchive feature where I could setup an extra directory for each folder and any file over a user set number of days was automatically moved to the second directory. That way they would get recorded to the correct folder on the internal drive, but would be archived to the external drive.

But, I don't have the problem with not finding the other folders. But then again, I never turn the NAS system off.

[johngaul]

Can't you record directly to your NAS?

[tsandayu]

I have recorded directly, but only with the NAS-4000p system. The Fastora one dropped offline too often. I plan on moving soon and will take the NAS with me to watch recorded shows, and leave the BTV system to keep on recording until I return to get it.

[freak7782]

I've setup a similar situation as you all are discussing. But there's one point that hasn't been directly addressed.

What happens if Snapstream goes to record a show and the drive is disconnected? Will it crash? Not record at all? Or record to a different folder(this is the one I want)?

[johngaul]

I am now recording directly to my file server in the garage with no problems.
I downed the server and ran a test recording to see what happens. BTV hung with no errors, had to restart, message shutting down was ActiveMovie Window "this program is not responding" After rebooting BTV server(file server still offline), I brought my file server back online and was unable to reconnect the store. Tried to shut down BTV and was unsuccessful, another reboot of the BTV server and network store was reconnected. BTV server is running XP, file server is 2003 server.

[mdsinger]

One thing to keep in mind.

If you add a folder to BTV, and then remove the drive, it'll happily keep on churning.

However, if you go into the configuration and try to remove (or change properties of) that folder while it is disconnected, BTV will freak out.

Maybe the guys at snapstream should treat that as a bug.