Suggestions? - How to add a new HD and split media between 2 drives?

stevedawg85 · 4. April 2016

I'm still new to OMV, maybe the answer is obvious and I just don't know about it. I'm using Kodi and Emby.

I have a 3tb drive that is nearing capacity w/ Movies and TV shows. I purchased a 4tb drive and plan on installing it, I'm curious what is the suggested way to turn this into 7tb for my media? Is it common practice just to start placing media on the new 4tb and keep in mind everything on this drive is added "post April 16". Then simply add the new drive/location to my Kodi and Emby?

I don't care for parity or data recovery. I just want to make sure however I set it up now will not bite me in the ass a few yrs down the line or if/when I add a 3rd media drive.

ryecoaaron · 4. April 2016

I would try the unionfilesystem plugin with mergerfs.

tekkb · 4. April 2016

I use symlinks....

How to share your data across Drives with symlinks and no pooling.

ryecoaaron · 5. April 2016

Symlinks served a purpose when we had problems with aufs and mhddfs. mergerfs is fast, super stable and very flexible.

stevedawg85 · 5. April 2016

I was playing w/ union on a couple flash drives, and wow super easy to set up. A couple questions:

It generated a folder name of af0d0a41-600e-45a8-bd19-b9d3cf1ff37, can I rename this?
I left Create Policy as default - "Existing path, most free space." Does this mean when a new file is added to af0d0...., it'll go to the drive w/ most free space?
What does the "existing path" mean in the above, because there is another option for simply, "most free space."
I also left minimum free space to 4G - does this mean it'll stop writing to the drive when only 4Gb remain?
So when I'm ready to perform this on my real 3tb drive and 4tb drive, it seems like my current data is safe, I just may have to update my emby and kodi path settins, is that an accurate statement?

snow3461 · 6. April 2016

Zitat von stevedawg85

I was playing w/ union on a couple flash drives, and wow super easy to set up. A couple questions:
It generated a folder name of af0d0a41-600e-45a8-bd19-b9d3cf1ff37, can I rename this?

You can't rename it, its a unique uuid, like for your hard drive.
Install the Downloader plugin, and look at the symlink tab. You can create a symbolic link named as you want, that point to your union fs pool or filesystem, for easier use with apps that need a path.

trapexit · 7. April 2016

If you want to understand how mergerfs policies work it's best to read the documentation.

$ man mergerfs
or
https://github.com/trapexit/me…ons--policies--categories

tekkb · 7. April 2016

I think mergerfs is great solution. I am not being critical of that solution. Symlinks are something that everyone should become familiar with in Linux though. It will solve problems in many situations.

2devnull · 1. Mai 2016

I am having issues with a setup similar to this. I have mergerfs across two drives for mythtv recordings. I use a script to get meaningful names for the numeric mythtv names which I create hardlinks for. Filebot then looks at those and moves the hardlinks to an organized structure. The problem is that hardlinks can't cross over the devices mergerfs pools so that is problem #1. I then try symlinks, but the the emby for kodi plugin I use in OpenElec says that it is not a playable file. I use the path substitution in emby so that OpenElec's Emby for Kodi plugin streams the file directly from NFS rather than going through the Emby server via http.

If anyone has any ideas why symlinks are not working in this case I would be glad to find another way around this problem rather that getting a single larger drive and continue to use hardlinks.

trapexit · 1. Mai 2016

Why keep the files with their original names?

Or, why not use another policy for link? The reason it fails is because you have epmfs or eplfs. You've told it not to recreate paths. The details are in the docs

https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs#rename--link

2devnull · 2. Mai 2016

@trapexit .....thanks for the reply. I will take a look at the link but to answer your question. the reason the original names are needed is because mythtv keeps this reference in its database to expire recordings (i.e. you can set rules in it to keep a maximum amount of a particular shows and have the oldest deleted to record a new one etc.)

EDIT: Oh Lord! I used mfs and it now works. I had done what Zack Reed did not thinking the effects epmfs would have on this setup.....a million thanks and keep up this awesome work. Zack and I had been beating with aufs for quite sometime, compiling kernels etc. just to get it to work but since he jumped to mergerfs and wrote it up on his blog and OMV supported it, I just decided to switch also.

Jetzt mitmachen!