[mythtv-users] additional drive

[Simon Hobson]

Daryl McDonald <darylangela at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hoi Hika, I'm unclear on adding the second mount point. I stop the back-end and go to storage directories and don't know what to so from there. I did change the fstab as you suggested to /media/storage2 

OK, so your second drive is now mounted on /media/storage2. Make a directory in there (say mythtv) - never put your recordings in the root of the drive*
In mythtv-setup go to storage groups, select the storage group you want to have using the drive**, and then there is an option to add an additional directory - add /media/storage2/mythtv. Sorry it's a bit vague, but it's a long time since I've done it. You can have multiple storage groups (e videos, recordings, and so on) using the second drive - you'll need to create a directory for each and add it to the storage group setup.

You will *NOT* see any difference on any frontend other than seeing the extra space in backend status.

If your older drive is "fairly full", then once you have things working, you can move some of the recordings to the new drive. Myth will not do this - but if you have it set right it will spread new recordings across the two drives. Over time, with older recordings watched and deleted, you should find the free space will balance out somewhat. But if (like me) you are recording stuff faster than you watch it, then the older drive will still fill up (but more slowly than without the second drive).


* If the drive fails to mount, then Myth will put new recordings in the directory on the parent filesystem (often your root volume). This typically isn't very big and Myth will fill it quickly - with inconvenient results.
By putting the recordings within a subdirectory, if the volume fails to mount then the directory isn't there - so myth won't try and put recordings there.