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Hello!
I'm kinda new to Kodi and its library feature. (I'm using Windows 8.1)
I have all my media files in several 2.5" USB HDDs which I connect as needed (I have an HDD for movies, one for TV series, one for anime etc.).
Which would be the best way to manage my media via Kodi's library?
Is there a way to store a Kodi library in each HDD so Kodi would detect it when I plug it the HDD? (I mean a library for movies, one for TV shows etc...)
Or I must create a global library? Although with a global library I'm afraid there could be conflicts: if I scan each HDD connecting them one by one they would all get the same drive letter so when I connect 2 HDD the media files on the second HDD would be unreachable.
How do you manage your library?
Thanks for the help.
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I know but the thing is that the PC is kinda portable (it's an Asus VivoPC) and I don't have much room where I keep it
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00b5
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I think you can assign drive letters to drives specifically in windows, so that it remembers it.
However anything can change and mess that up, so keep that in mind.
If you want to keep it "portable", perhaps its time to get a single larger external hdd that can hold everything, problem solved?
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Thanks for your reply.
I thought about assigning drive letters too but as you said it's very easy to mess that up. Also connecting all the hard drives via an usb hub could be a solution but my wife will surely kill me because of the ugly web of cables...
Sounds strange to me that no one else had my problem. It would be a nice feature to have a distributed library that gets saved on external media and loaded automatically when the media is plugged in.
Or I just have to give up using the library and watch movies via the file browser as I did on my Xbox 1 in the early days of XBMC.
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Here are some tips to do this right...
1. Don't map the drive, but instead, share the folder on the drive. Drive mapping can get messed up with reboots, patches, usb issues, etc. But a folder share will always be just that. So if you have a usb drive with a folder called 'Movies', the share would look like \\pcname\Movies. So it doesn't matter what order the drive is on the system, it will show up in Kodi as \\pcname\Movies.
2. Do the same for TVShows, and Anime on the other drives.
3. Be aware, that in Kodi, if you don't have the correct drive plugged in, you will get a message that says "Would you like to remove this source. Yes/No" if you try to play something from a drive that isn't there. Also, if you 'Clean' the Library, this will remove all the content from the Hard dive 'Sources' that aren't plugged in. So don't do a 'Clean Library' or 'Update Library' without first plugging in all your Drives first (and restart Kodi when you do this).
4. Finally, you need to make sure that your 'Sources' are listed as the SMB name, and not a Drive letter. So when you first setup your 'Movies' source, you used the SMB share \\pcname\Movies, and not D:\Movies (or whatever drive letter was assigned to the USB drive your Movies were located on).
Hope this helps you.
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I have a similar need. I want to put my Kodi raspberry pi on my boat and it would be nice to have different thumb drives with different content like movies, music, etc. and have kodi recognize what media is available based on what's plugged in, and available. I don't want to plug in and have to guess which media is available on which drive.
Is there a way to have the media library stored on the same drive with the media? That way if the drive is disconnected, the media doesn't show up.
Does that make sense?
