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Stategy for filling Archive drives.


daveyboy37

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Well i havent been around much for a couple of years probably a sign that a program just works. :)

 

Anways I have jut purchased my first 8TB archive drive and I'm looking at using it as exactly that. I want to fill that drive with movies to the required capacity defragment if needed and then have DrivePool see it as full.

 

I'm thinking the "ordered file placement" plugin is what I need by setting the new drive at the top.

I only want to fill the drive with movies as they tend to be pretty static as opposed to TV shows (new episodes) and Music (new albums for an existing artist.) But it seems there is no option to say fill only with a particular category.

 

ATM I just have the one 8TB drive and my movies amount to 17TB around 1800 movies. Definitely I want the associated metadata to stay with the movie not be elsewhere on the pool. When the drive is at capacity defragment and catalog exactly what is on that hard drive.

 

I know I can set rules via Balancing > File Placement > Folders. This will then ensure that the metadata stays on the same drive as the movie. The problem being this has to be done for each individual movie with no option for example to group select a bunch of movies and move them to the new drive.

 

Obviously I cannot move all the movies because 17TB into 8TB doesn't go.  

 

So maybe a couple of feature requests... The ability to bulk select in Balancing > File Placement > Folders

Also the ability to save personal setting such as rules should there be the need to ever reinstall. I will create the required rules if necessary but thought of manually creating thousands of rules and then a reinstall means they're all gone fills me with dread. :o

 

There may of course be something I have totally missed or an easier way to go about this?

 

I did wonder what would happen if I tell my 17TB of movies to only reside on the new drive. Will it fill the drive and then complain when its full (this would probably get me close to where I want to be) or will it say it cant do it at the start. I guess I will find out when I get home from work.​​

Edited by daveyboy37
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For the most part, the File Placement rules should be what you want. 

 

For instance, create a rule for "\Videos\Movies\*" and enable it for just the drives you want. Make sure you set the "allow files to be placed on other drives..." setting, so that once the drive is full, it will place the files on other disks.

 

 

However, are you frequently deleting files (such as the music and TV shows)? If not, then this really shouldn't matter. The reason is that the SMR tech has issues more with rewriting files than fragmentation. 

If you're constantly adding files to the pool/drive and not actually deleting them, then there shouldn't be an issue here.

 

 

 

 

 

As for the rules, what do you mean specifically?

And you can can go to the "rules" tab and manually type them in.  This may be closer to what you want, anyways.

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Oh wow Thank you.

 

I had totally forgotten about the ability to manually type in rules. That's definitely what I'm looking for. :) Because my movie collection is much larger than the single 8TB hard drive I had hoped for example as a starting point to just have movies starting with  #-H

 

So in effect all movies from "2 Fast 2 Furious" through to "Fury" Not necessarily an all in one rule but perhaps something like (in my case)

\SERVERFOLDERS\COUCHPOTATO MOVIES\A*

\SERVERFOLDERS\COUCHPOTATO MOVIES\B*

Would this work and are those rules correct for movies beginning with A & B?

 

As for deleting stuff it never ever happens (I have some amazingly bad movies in my collection) :D

The nearest I get to deleting is when SickRage replaces a season of web-downloads with a Blu-Ray release that It finds or I  purchase.

This is the very reason that shows will not go on the archive drives at least until a show is ended/cancelled and the quality is at optimum. This way the archive drives will hopefully be "write once" which as you imply are their intended purpose.

 

I cannot believe I forgot about the ability to write rules.... I tend to see a feature in programs think to myself "I will never use it" and then forget it exists.​

 

Anyway thanks for the help as always Chris... If you could confirm (or correct) the rules above It would be appreciated.

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Yes, the rules should work fine.

 

You can see details here:

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=File%20Placement

 

As for SickRage, I can definitely understand taht! (though I like that Sonarr/nzb.drone has a "trash" folder it will move replaced/deleted files to).

 

 

But to re-emphasize, there really isn't a reason to "wait" on using the drive in your situation. The drives are "WORM" type devices. Meaning that once the data is written to it, it can be read frequently.  Also, you can adding a file at a time (such as with TV Shows). The issue is when you start deleting files from the drive (or moving them off).  

So if your data isn't being moved around a lot, then there is no reason to not use this drive. 

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Yes, the rules should work fine.

 

You can see details here:

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=File%20Placement

 

As for SickRage, I can definitely understand taht! (though I like that Sonarr/nzb.drone has a "trash" folder it will move replaced/deleted files to).

 

 

But to re-emphasize, there really isn't a reason to "wait" on using the drive in your situation. The drives are "WORM" type devices. Meaning that once the data is written to it, it can be read frequently.  Also, you can adding a file at a time (such as with TV Shows). The issue is when you start deleting files from the drive (or moving them off).  

So if your data isn't being moved around a lot, then there is no reason to not use this drive. 

 

Thanks for the link Chris that clarified lots. 

Yeah the new drive is a moot point with TV shows atm. I need at least another 2 archive drives just for the movies so it will be when finances allow.. After that I will start looking at more organisation of the shows. They themselves will need another 3 X 8TB. My friends just keep asking for more and more shows... Curse them  :lol:

As for Sonarr, yeah i found a lot to like with it. Sadly Im a private tracker person and there seems to be a little more maturity with getting some of the less mainstream trackers working. A couple of my most used trackers just wouldnt work with Sonarr. To add to that a couple of minor annoyances with SickRage seem to have been fixed over the last couple of weeks. 

 

Anyway thanks again for the help and advice.

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You are very welcome, and glad to have helped.

 

 

My friends just keep asking for more and more shows... Curse them  :lol:

HAHAHAHA.  I know that all too well. :)

If it makes you feel any better, I have ~5TB of movies (slacking, I know), 5TB of anime, and ~15TBs of TV shows. All duplicated. It takes up a lot of space. And I'm running out of room in my Norco RPC-4220!


As for Sonarr, yeah i found a lot to like with it. Sadly Im a private tracker person and there seems to be a little more maturity with getting some of the less mainstream trackers working. A couple of my most used trackers just wouldnt work with Sonarr. To add to that a couple of minor annoyances with SickRage seem to have been fixed over the last couple of weeks. 

 

Ah, yeah, I understand that. Though, Sonarr does support a number of private trackers already. You may be able to request for more.

Though, I'm a usenet guy.  I like getting 10+MB/s download speeds rather than 2-3... if I'm lucky, and it's the first couple of days after a release...

 

Though, SickRage has been banned from a lot of indexing services for basically disregarding their rules and requests to reduce API calls.  (basically the devs don't care.... and actively try to work around the bans). So ... there is that, if that's a factor.

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Yes Chris, definitely slacking!

 

folders.png

 

however I haven't just hijacked the thread for no reason!

 

I have 12 very fast drives... 12 slowish drives.. and 6 archive drives (deathly slow for writes)

 

Can I set it up so that new files written to the pool ONLY go onto the 12 very fast disks

 

and then in the background the balancers make sure that all 30 drives stay the same % full?

 

I assume I need the SSD plugin, but there seem to be too many options. help please! hehehe

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Yes Chris, definitely slacking!

 

Well, are those uncompressed rips? Or h.264 encoded files? ;)

And yeah, I need more. Though, I'm limited on capacity. I only have 4 more bays left before I need to get an SAS Expander case, and they're not cheap. :(

 

 

 

 

however I haven't just hijacked the thread for no reason!

 

I have 12 very fast drives... 12 slowish drives.. and 6 archive drives (deathly slow for writes)

 

Can I set it up so that new files written to the pool ONLY go onto the 12 very fast disks

 

and then in the background the balancers make sure that all 30 drives stay the same % full?

 

I assume I need the SSD plugin, but there seem to be too many options. help please! hehehe

There really isn't a great way to do this.

 

The SSD Optimizer will work, but it will actively try to empty the SSD drives.  

 

As for options, you only need the basic options, and you can ignore the "ordered file placement" stuff. That was added because there was no good issue to resolve an issue between the two balancers, other than by "merging" them.

 

Just select the "SSD"/fast drives, and use the rest for archive drives.  That will place new files on the fast/ssd drives, and then empty them to the slower "archive" drives.

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Yes, where ever possible they are simply rips

 

even the 4GB/episode stuff looks blurry and soft to me, compared to the 8-12GB/episode bluray rips

 

yeah.. in terms of DP plugins I've only got the scanner, SSD, and space equalizer on.

 

I've told the SSD plugin it can let the drives get to 100% full.. so hopefully it will only let new files get added to the very fast disks

 

then the space equaliser should move stuff in the background so all the disks are filled to the same percentage

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