[mythtv-users] removable storage questions

[James Miller]

On Tue, 26 May 2009, I wrote:

> Hello all. I'm running a little low on disk space on my Mythtv (Mythbuntu) 
> box and so am thinking of ways to address the problem. I have a few "smaller" 
> (by Mythtv standards, anyway) hard drives, 40-100GB in size, and am 
> considering whether I might offload, for longer-term storage, of some 
> recordings I plan to keep. There's not room inside the box for adding more 
> drives, by the way, so for now I'm sort of limited to using these as external 
> storage hooked (via an adapter) to USB. So I'm talking in principle about 
> removable or even hotplugged storage. I did some searching on the web and in 
> the wiki but did not manage yet to find information addressing the scenarios 
> I envision. Thus the current post.

I've implemented a solution posed in this thread, details of which were 
clarified by Mike. I've now tested it and it seems to work as advertised. 
I'm largely satisfied with the results. So I'll briefly describe in this 
final post on the topic the steps I followed to implement the solution.

I used (slightly dated) information found at 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=f0b20f9e8542e9996088a02a2beb03be&t=168221 
to get data that would allow me to create a udev rule for each of the 
drives I'm using. This was necessary, in my case, for a few reasons: 1) I 
will not have more than 1 drive plugged into the system at one time; 2) 
the distro I use, Mythbuntu, is set to auto-mount attached USB storage; 
and 3) the mount points for these drives need to be consistent and unique 
for this solution to work on my system. 1) and 2) can lead to the 
possibility of two of my drives sharing a mount point which, while not a 
show-stopping outcome, could lead to some confusion at the least. Caveat: 
this solution may not be applicable to other scenarios, e.g., those in 
which a single USB drive is used or in the case of distros that are not 
configured to auto-mount attached USB drives.

So, using information gotten from the supplied link I got data that 
allowed me to create a udev rule for each of my drives. Then, I created 
unique mount points and corresponding fstab entries for each drive based 
on the udev rules I created. Incidentally, I put these mount points under 
the disused (at least by Ubuntu and variants) /mnt directory, so as not to 
confuse these with auto-mount entries the system is configured to place 
under the /media directory. Next, I created a single folder on each 
mounted drive. Then, I added that folder, along with the rest of the path 
to it, as a storage group under Mythtv setup. Finally, I moved a recording 
to one such folder on a newly-mounted drive as a test--success! I was able 
to view the recording so long as the drive was connected. When the drive 
is not connected and I try to view the recording the system simply tells 
me it can't find the recording.

Now, each time I plug one of my drives into the system it gets mounted at 
the specified mount point. I can view recordings stored on each drive or 
move over to them more recordings for long-term storage. Overall I'm happy 
with the result. The only minor inconvenience is the need to unmount the 
drives when I'm finished viewing/archiving, so as to be able to power off 
the drive.

Thanks,
James