Cannot Export library from external hard drive onto windows 10 or any other OS
#1
I have 2 external hard drives connected to my android box and have scraped 12tb of movies and TV. everything is tagged and ordered nicely, I can move my library and build easy enough between android boxes using the BACKUP add-on. my aim is to have this same library, look and feel cross platformed on all my devices...PC, laptop etc and there in lies the problem.

The BACKUP add-on will successfully move across all the entries for all my TV and Movies but every entry is just dead, the external hard drives aren't automatically showing up in 'FILES' as they do on android? The only option is to 'ADD SOURCE' but when I do I'm then given the option to re-scrape the entire hard drive (is it movies, tv etc) if I re-scrape the entire hard drive I'm now left with DUPLICATES of every entry and of course this new scrape doesn't have anything tagged and things are out of order..Sad

I have tried to just click 'nothing' when adding the hard drive to 'FILES' in a vain hope it will now play the entries its picked up with the BACKUP programme, but no dice. 

I've tried the long manual way of moving builds and library entries by copying the ADDONS & USERDATA into the relevant folders only to yield the SAME RESULT..(it gives you the entries of the library but without the relevant source in 'FILES' being detected each entry is dead and doesn't play) 

The EXPORT LIBRARY option just does NOT WORK.. both options keep saying It needs relevant permissions, the individual option just returns a failed to create dialogue for every folder and the individual option keeps saying it doesn't have permission to write onto the disk even though I've granted every permission possible and EVERYONE has the ability to write onto the hard drive?

I'm at my WITS END WITH IT Sad …..

Everything I've read about it seems to be really out of date, none of the IMPORT / EXPORT library options work anymore no matter how many permissions I grant?

I've been using Kodi and building my setup/menus/library/look/feel etc on my android box for nearly 8 months now and would like to consider myself not a total NEWB but this has just stumped me..


All I want to achieve is to have the SAME build reading from the SAME LIBRARY on MULTIPLE platforms....I realise this means manually plugging in the external hard drive into whatever platform/OS I'll be using at the time.

I got a sweet remote for my desktop + Laptop and with the 80+ customised menu's I'm rocking I hope I can take full advantage of my PC's processing power as oppose to a tiny android box which is lagging and crashing due to the sheer amount of stuff I've scraped onto it already. 

ANY AND ALL HELP WITH THIS WOULD BE MASSIVELY APPRECIATED.

I'M ABOUT READY TO SUCK A TAIL PIPE.....Smile
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#2
I could be wrong but I think every time you unplug and plug the external drives it loses the path. Could you not add the external drives to a pc or router and access them from your home network on all your devices? That's what I do apart from i run a crappy old pc with windows 7 just to act as a server that I leave running 24/7 to access my media on from all my devices

All the best

Paul
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#3
(2019-03-11, 16:07)And Roddis Wrote: I have 2 external hard drives connected to my android box and have scraped 12tb of movies and TV
Android is basically a Linux variant. Which disk format did you use on your two external HDDs: NTFS, FAT32, EXT4, EXFAT, something else?
Can you also store new videos onto the 2 HDDs via Android? If not, then it's a general folder/file rights problems. It's also possible that Android itself is being limited in its options as far as external storage goes.
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#4
Home networking just aint an option atm the quick attempt I just had at setting up my PC and making it discoverable just led to me not being able to connect to the internet?> I'll be honest its not something I know very much about and I'm just running the risk of making a change and totally fucking my PC.

Also doing it this way would mean I'm to give up on the build/library I've already created and start again fresh on the PC? I just don't know enough about it I'm afraid Sad I'm genuinely tempted to start a fresh build and start again on the PC but it's the same problem. any build/library I create just won't show up in 'FILES' so i'm just back at square 1.
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#5
I might have misunderstood here, but are you wanting to physically move your hard drives between machines?  So plug the drives into your pc when you run kodi on that?
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#6
yup, that's the one... I have a build I like , fully scraped, tv , movies , all tagged and ordered running on an android box from two external hard drives.

Now I just wanna move the WHOLE THING onto my PC and/or Laptop... (because the sheer amount of stuff I have on the android box is causing it to crash and lag)

I can get it 90% done.

everything moves over using the BACKUP add on, I get menu entries and all my tags appear...

Just none of em work...

and when I manually ADD the HDD's in 'FILES' it just wants to re-scape everything... meaning everything doubles up and is now all out of order and not tagged.

I just can't get the export / import library thing to work either... I've granted all the permissions I can give in windows 10??
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#7
The paths (of your hard drives) are completely different on a pc.  That's why it doesn't work.

Can you post your sources.xml from the android box here (or better post it to a paste site and a link here)?
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#8
(2019-03-11, 19:15)And Roddis Wrote: and when I manually ADD the HDD's in 'FILES' it just wants to re-scape everything
That's because Kodi stores the full path of each video into its database. You cannot simply drag your harddrives around and expect Kodi to magically know the difference. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately.
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#9
hmmmm I'm not seeing a sources.xml in the userdata folder?... checking on my android box using ES file explorer... I see guisettings.xml, profiles.xml,rssfeeds.xml and favourites.xml.... there's no sources.xml? is it hidden in one of the other folders?.. I have show hidden files already checked
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#10
It's not a hidden file.  It's either in userdata or userdata/profile, or it's pathsubbed somewhere else in advancedsettings.xml, or it doesn't exist.
If you've set up sources in android then you have a sources.xml (or you had one and it's been deleted).
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#11
you know the more I'm beginning to understand about it I'm probably gonna be better off just giving in and rebuilding the whole thing from scratch on the PC then look into networking it all so its just reading from ONE source rather than trying to physically move my hard drives each time..

Now what would be ACE is if someone could tell me how to get the EXPORT LIBRARY to ACTUALLY WORK??!!….

This would obviously save a MASSIVE amount of time as a lot of the movies I scraped don't have NFO'S (I just scraped them manually) so finding some sort of way to save me wading back through over 8tb of stuff would be SUPER ACE Smile !

now I'm sure read somewhere on a forum that the export library feature actually doesn't work anymore no matter what you do? all the videos online about it are YEARS old and I know a lot has changed with kodi as ppl were loading up android boxes and selling em on..etc

I've read all about making sure it has the right permissions but I think maybe I'm understanding it wrong? because I've gone into properties of my hard drives and changed the permission's so that EVERYONE can write onto it , yet it still delivers the same UNABLE TO CREATE dialogue...

Am I missing a trick here?

What am I doing wrong? any chance someone could give me a blow by blow , step by step way of getting the export library feature to actually WORK on android?

Big thanks to all of you for your replies and help so far, Its a shame its not that easy to cross platform library's and builds, but then again in my experience with Kodi this past year NOTHING IS EVER SIMPLES...…

Thanks again for all your help.
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#12
I'm going to make a wild guess here...
... your problem with exporting the library is that on android kodi can't write to an external drive.  It can only write to kodi's own folder (something like /sdcard/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/).  That's true in marshmallow onwards IIRC.
If that's the case then you have a few alternatives, none of them especially simple.
If you can find the path of each harddrive in android and the path to the same drive in windows (which is why I was asking for your sources.xml) then you can export your library to separate files from windows, which is probably your best bet.
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