[mrob]

I've got Kodi on a headless Linux server (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) with a hot-swappable HDD box.

My idea has been to store a bunch of movies on external HDDs, use media stubs, and then connect the specific HDD as necessary to play a specific movie.

But looking more closely, I realize that media stubs are mainly for DVD and BluRay discs, as the Play button becomes active when a disc is inserted.

I guess I could add/remove the source(s) for each HDD, each time I mount/unmount the HDD, but that seems like a pain. Scanning takes time, too.

Also, if I scan a source on an external HDD and then later unmount it, would Kodi complain and/or fill up the log with errors for missing media files?

Any suggestions about a good/simple way to approach this?

[mrob]

Bump. Anybody?

[Klojum]

Kodi is unfortunately not that versatile when it comes to juggling with multiple external disks that get connected and disconnected constantly. Scanning disconnected drives will get you plenty of log entry errors, but that shouldn't be a problem. You can also turn of Kodi's logging... Kodi would only complain visibly when you try to start a video from a drive that is not available. But the trouble really starts when you want to do a Video Library export, or do a Clean Video Library action.

Do you have that many drives that they don't/can't fit in the Ubuntu server casing? How about upgrading to a (single) bigger harddrive, and use the old ones as backup?

On a side note, there is also the age-old question whether it is better for harddrives to run constantly or to have to spin up&down all the time. There are pros and cons on that.

[mrob]

Kodi is unfortunately not that versatile when it comes to juggling with multiple external disks that get connected and disconnected constantly. Scanning disconnected drives will get you plenty of log entry errors, but that shouldn't be a problem. You can also turn of Kodi's logging... Kodi would only complain visibly when you try to start a video from a drive that is not available. But the trouble really starts when you want to do a Video Library export, or do a Clean Video Library action.

Do you have that many drives that they don't/can't fit in the Ubuntu server casing? How about upgrading to a (single) bigger harddrive, and use the old ones as backup?

On a side note, there is also the age-old question whether it is better for harddrives to run constantly or to have to spin up&down all the time. There are pros and cons on that.

Yes, it's limitations with "Clean Library" etc. that have me concerned.

It's not so much that I have many extra drives, as that I'm at 85% full and there are still many films in my collection on DVD-R. I'd like to copy everything from the DVD-Rs to HDDs and then make backups. Some of the DVD-Rs are already 10+ years old, and I don't trust them to last.

Bigger HDDs are a possible solution. There are four HDD slots in the PC case. I want to use one to insert a backup drive and backup each of the others to that. That leaves three slots. With three 2TB drives, that's 6TB total. If I used the more expensive 6TB HDDs, that would be 18TB total. There is a big price point difference (2x) between, for example, WD Blue and WD Red 6TB drives. Not sure how to evaluate that.

As for the drives spinning up vs. stopping, I don't know what Ubuntu does for that, or whether it's something configured(?) in the HDD itself.

[Klojum]

I currently have 2 similar Ubuntu 16.04.6 desktop machines acting as servers.
One is on 24/7, and holds a big portion of the current collection on 4 drives, which are spinning all the time.
The other is the backup 'server' with 5 drives, and is only on whenever the backups are done via rsync, every 2-3 months or so.
I don't do RAID stuff or so, I'm keeping it simple. And yeah, I could use a couple of bigger drives as well to hold the growing collection.

I don't know what the current 'sweet spot' is for bigger harddrives. I haven't looked at their prices lately. I'm guessing it would be the 6-8TB drives. If I'm to believe the reports, the Toshiba drives aren't that bad either for simple storage.

[mrob]

I currently have 2 similar Ubuntu 16.04.6 desktop machines acting as servers.
One is on 24/7, and holds a big portion of the current collection on 4 drives, which are spinning all the time.
The other is the backup 'server' with 5 drives, and is only on whenever the backups are done via rsync, every 2-3 months or so.
I don't do RAID stuff or so, I'm keeping it simple. And yeah, I could use a couple of bigger drives as well to hold the growing collection.

I don't know what the current 'sweet spot' is for bigger harddrives. I haven't looked at their prices lately. I'm guessing it would be the 6-8TB drives. If I'm to believe the reports, the Toshiba drives aren't that bad either for simple storage.

I'm currently using Toshiba drives and have had good experiences thus far. Not using RAID, also.

Do you run Kodi from one of these Ubuntu boxes or do you have another machine for that? Server HDDs mounted via NFS?

For HDD prices, I found this: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&disk_t...w&units=GB

For Toshiba 3.5", it looks like 4TB is a sweet spot now.

[Klojum]

Do you run Kodi from one of these Ubuntu boxes or do you have another machine for that? Server HDDs mounted via NFS?

I have been using Ubuntu Desktops since v10.04 and use only their NFS file services for then XBMC and now Kodi. And all pretty much without a glitch.

I run Kodi on my 'office PC' on Ubuntu 16.04 + Nvidia gpu, which does a good enough job for me. Further I have a couple of other Kodi clients around the house.