[mythtv-users] Moving recordings to a different physical drive

[Dave Ulrick]

On 5/18/22 11:14 PM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>
> There is no definitive need to stop mythbackend while moving recording
> files around.  All you need to do is make sure that nothing is going
> to be using a recording file when you move it.  You may want to still
> stop mythbackend to prevent it from trying to record to drives that
> are too busy with their full bandwidth being used to move files.
>
> The way to move recordings to a new location is to first create the
> new location and add it to your storage groups.  Do not add it to the
> "Default" storage group, to prevent mythbackend from trying to record
> to it yet.  Just create a temporary storage group.  Then just move the
> recording files to the new locations.  While a file is being moved,
> its filename will be visible in both the new and old locations at the
> same time.  That will not cause any problems unless you try to use the
> file, like playing it from a frontend.  Once all the recordings have
> been moved, remove the old locations from the storage groups and move
> the new locations to the "Default" storage group.
>
> If you want to do the moving while still running the system and making
> recordings, I have a Python program (mythsgu) which can be used to do
> this.  It has to be set up so that it can see the current MythTV
> status, and it will pause moving files whenever it sees any activity
> (such as a recording or playback).  I have been using it for years now
> every time I upgrade one of my recording drives to a larger size one.
> I add the new recording drive to the PC on a temporary mount and move
> the old drive's storage group entry out of "Default" and add a storage
> group entry for the new drive.  Then I use mythsgu to copy all the
> files from the old drive to the new one.  Once done, I remove the old
> drive and its storage group entry and move the new drive to where the
> old one was.
I've finished moving my recordings to the two new SSD drives. Your 
temporary storage group suggestion worked out well. I moved all the 
recordings while mythbackend was running. I didn't have any issues with 
new recordings, I'd previously added one SSD drive which had priority 
over the iSCSI LUN so no new recordings have been saved to the LUN in 
over six months.

Although the iSCSI LUN worked without issue, I feel better about storing 
the recordings right on the backend's own storage.

Thanks,
Dave