BTV 4.0 improved disk mgr questions

[Zogg]

I'm looking forward to upgrading over the weekend, too many captures tonight and tomorrow to risk an upgrade now. I was wondering if someone could tell me more details about the improved disk management features of 4.0.

1. Can you now move files and NOT lose all the metadata?
2. Can you see how much space you have left in a folder within the web admin?
3. Will it auto-select another folder or drive if you run out of space?

Thanks,
Z

[StephaneM]

Hello Z,

1. Can you now move files and NOT lose all the metadata?

Yes

2. Can you see how much space you have left in a folder within the web admin?

No (By the way my Web Guide will let you see how many free space is available on your folders and does as well let you move your files with a progress bar)

3. Will it auto-select another folder or drive if you run out of space?

No

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Greg Caulder]

No point in upgrading then.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by Greg Caulder

No point in upgrading then.

Unless of course you'd like to have a BTV with countless bugs fixed (read the release notes), enhanced FSUI features, HD support, and possibly a free upgrade to the integrated Beyond TV / Beyond Media package. Does not being able to span disk drives (which has never been an option) makes all of those reasons worthless?

[optikhog]

Originally Posted by HomeyFour

Unless of course you'd like to have a BTV with countless bugs fixed (read the release notes), enhanced FSUI features, HD support, and possibly a free upgrade to the integrated Beyond TV / Beyond Media package.

I gotta second the bug fix note here - I upgraded just for stability and have not been disappointed. 4.0 is REALLY solid.

[Edgarmoon]

I had no bug fixes for my system between 3.7.4 and 4.0, in fact two new bugs appeared, I lost the ability to watch shows with directvobsub's (srt or smi files), and the record a show on multiple channels ability has been disabled. However, as this is the future I decided to upgrade anyway and am confident these bugs will get worked out in 4.0.1 or whatever. THe view by category is a nice touch, and HD will be nice to have. I also want btv/bm integration, but bm also has a lot of bugs. I would add your requests to the bugfix list, intelligent folder mgmt (if one folder gets full it goes to the next folder). Also, another irritation, nip/tuck occasionally gets listed as finishing 2 minutes over the hour, which screws up my dailyshow recording. It would be cool if there was a way to have it allow up to so many minutes and still record the next show, and for manual recordings, start them late regardless of how late they are.

[Greg Caulder]

Originally Posted by HomeyFour

Unless of course you'd like to have a BTV with countless bugs fixed (read the release notes), enhanced FSUI features, HD support, and possibly a free upgrade to the integrated Beyond TV / Beyond Media package. Does not being able to span disk drives (which has never been an option) makes all of those reasons worthless?

Yes it is going ot be a major issue with the HD content hogging up all of the hard drive space. And the whole point ot having a DVR software is so that you dont have to baby sit it all of the time making sure you move all of your content from the default forlder to other folders.

[duncan]

Originally Posted by Greg Caulder

Yes it is going ot be a major issue with the HD content hogging up all of the hard drive space. And the whole point ot having a DVR software is so that you dont have to baby sit it all of the time making sure you move all of your content from the default forlder to other folders.

I could be missing something but I totally don't get your comment about "baby sit it all of the time making sure you move all of your content from the default forlder to other folders". BTV has had - for a very long time - the option of not only putting shows whereever you want them to begin with but also after you have done any transcoding (to yet another folder). So drive spanning doesn't get you anything there anyway.

What am I missing here?

[Greg Caulder]

what im talking about is not needing to shwosqueeze it, jsut let it record in its current condition. form there you would stil ahve to tell it to move the files to another folder. and if one folder gets full, and it happens all fo the time, it would automaticly go toanohter folder.


Now do you get it?

[cmcquistion]

Why not just use Windows ability to create Dynamic disks to create a partition that spans multiple drives?

This is what I do. I have a 250 GB drive and 200 GB drive. I have a 10 GB partition on one drive for the OS and application and then I use the remaining space on that drive, and all the space on the other drive, as one big dynamic disk (>400GB) for my shared media files (music, video, etc.)

Will this accomplish what you want?

[NYPlayer]

With Dynamic Disks... What happens if you lose 1 of the volumes do you lose all the Data?

[cmcquistion]

Originally Posted by NYPlayer

With Dynamic Disks... What happens if you lose 1 of the volumes do you lose all the Data?

From what I understand, you can rescue a Spanned Volume if you lose one disk and only lose the data that was actually on the lost disk. I have never done this, though, so I can't comment on the accuracy. Overall, I think the Dynamic disk route is better than the RAID 0 or JBOD route. On my setup, for example, if I lose the second disk, I will not lose my OS partition, because it is contained on only part of the first disk. If the second hard drive failed, then the worst case scenario is that I lose the data on the Spanned Volume.

If I used RAID O or JBOD, if I lost either disk, I would lose everything, including the partition that wasn't spanned across multiple disks.

[NYPlayer]

cmcquistion,

Thanks for the Info.. I was reading up on it and it appears that you can recover the data. I am going to give that a shot as I have 3 Volumes. Currently on my BTV server and am constantly moving data around.

[merrypig]

Once you are spanning with dynamic disks, you'll have no control over where your data gets dumped. It (presumably?) could end up fragmented across both disks - so if one dies, the other has 'half' the data, but a file table that thinks it's all there.

The chances are, unless you are lucky, your machine will not boot. You may be able to recover files with a tool that can decipher a dynamic disk at a low level but most likely this will leave you truncated files, or files with 'holes' in.

Dynamic disks sound 'cool' and do offer a lot of functionality, but they're a step in the wrong direction if you want reliability.

Are you sure there is no way to segment your recording jobs by target folder? I have all my tv shows going to one disk, all my movies to another - it's worked wonderfully for years.
I don't need more than 200GB of tv, and the other 200GB for movies is also more than enough for me to get through backing up to a dvd in time.

[NYPlayer]

I would never put my operating system on a dynamic Disk. So booting up should not be an Issue... unless of course my main Disk Fails.

This is the way I plan on setting it up.

Drive C: main operating system.

Drive D and E combined Dynamic Disks.

As far as losing data. Even if I have 2 basic disks and 1 fails I lose Data....but Using the Dynamic disks. I won't have to constantly move data around.