External Storage
#1
Hi All,

I have been using KODI for about 10 years now and am having to make a change to my external drive.

I am needing to upgrade from a 6TB to an 8TB drive because the 6TB has almost 3000 HD movies on board.

I should also mention that I use Nvidea Shield as my player and the problem that I think that I'm going to have when adding the new drive is that when I add all my movies from the back-up drive on my PC the meta data won't be there and of course KODI will start searching for all the titles etc.

My question is how can I get the drive copied exactly with all the data? Are there files stored on the Shield or on the 6TB drive that I can simply copy over or are the three files that I see on the external drive when adding movies all that I need to copy over or should I simply copy from one drive to the next through my PC even though this will take forever? I would of course just like to get the movie files that are stored on my PC's back-up drive.

Thanks you all for any help with this matter.

Regards,
Doug.
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#2
(2022-05-10, 21:39)Doorpro Wrote: the problem that I think that I'm going to have when adding the new drive is that when I add all my movies from the back-up drive on my PC the meta data won't be there and of course KODI will start searching for all the titles etc.
All metadata is in Kodi's video library. As a backup of that, you can do a video library export to separate nfo files to export that metadata as well as watched status + resume points.

Going from a full 6TB to a 8TB drive doesn't seem like a such a big step with HDDs with 12-20TB sizes now available, but that's just me.

If the 6/8TB drive is connected via USB, then I'd say it's best to format the HDD with the same partition name. I'm not sure how Android 11 'names' USB drives internally theses days. Using network drives is much easier in that regard.
If the 8TB is to connected to the Shield permanently, I'd use the EXT4 format which is the Linux default format type. Android is also a Linux-type OS.

(2022-05-10, 21:39)Doorpro Wrote: Are there files stored on the Shield or on the 6TB drive that I can simply copy over or are the three files that I see on the external drive when adding movies all that I need to copy over or should I simply copy from one drive to the next through my PC even though this will take forever?
I have no clue as to which three files you are referring to.

Other than that, it's simply copying the videos to identical folders to the 8TB drive.
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#3
Klojum,

thank you for your response, I think that you have answered the question that I had. I think that you have said that the player Nvidea Shield holds the meta data etc. so when I plug a new drive loaded with all the movies from the old drive that the Shield should see all the same files (movies) so there should be no problems with KODI starting to scrape all the movies again which can be a pain.

The drive is set up for movies only so there are no separate files for TV, Video or pictures etc. so the movies are simply installed onto the drive and it works great.

The three files that I mentioned are in the attached pictures and this is where I thought that the meta data would be stored but hopefully as you have said the Shield already has it all stored. Well now I couldn't find out where to attach the pictures, sorry.

regards,
Doug.
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#4
Please help me attach the pictures if you have time.
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#5
(2022-05-12, 00:03)Doorpro Wrote: so when I plug a new drive loaded with all the movies from the old drive that the Shield should see all the same files (movies) so there should be no problems with KODI starting to scrape all the movies again which can be a pain.
Unfortunately scraping isn't currently as fast as it used to be, but... when all folders and videos are identical on the new HDD, that new scraping shouldn't be necessary as the Kodi video database with all metadata is stored internally on your Nvidia Shield. Any exported metadata on nfo files should already be on the 6TB drive when do you do the Video Library Export beforehand, so all those would be copied over onto the 8TB drive when you do start the big copy process.

(2022-05-12, 00:05)Doorpro Wrote: Please help me attach the pictures if you have time.
Click on the i-button in the text editor menu (next to the smiley button), and you can select your local picture for upload and linkage via Imgur.
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#6
These are the three files that I mentioned.
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#7
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#8
(2022-05-12, 07:01)Doorpro Wrote: These are the three files that I mentioned.

Well, first they are folders and not files. The NVIDIA_SHIELD folder seems empty as is the LOST_DIR system folder. The Android folder seems to have some content but I guess you haven't looked yet what is in there. I don't know if the Nvidia Shield OS has put the extra two folders on there (if this is the contents of your HDD drive), but if they are, I don't see the Android and NVIDIA_SHIELD folders being necessary for Kodi usage.
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#9
Thank you for the info. There are a few files in one folder and none in the rest and I figured that it had something to do with the Shield because it does the same thing to every drive that I use through it including thumb drives.

Also, I have tried to simply attach a backup drive to the shield that has an exact copy of the main drive and even though it shows the same movie files none of them will play so I guess when I get the new drive I will simply copy everything over from old to new because there must be something on the original drive that allows them to play.
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#10
i am using windows but i thing this should still work it save the media files in to folder with the movie
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#11
Hi all,

I finally got round to changing up the 6TB drive to a much larger one and I took Klojum's advice and went much larger. Now I need help and I have re-read what was said months ago and I am still not getting it.

You see I copied all the movies over from one drive to the other exactly so both drives look alike and are the same size and I even named the drive exactly as the old drive was named.

Unfortunaltely what I thought would happen has happened and when I plug the new drive in it detects all the movies but it now says that "This file is no loger available" and "Would I like it removed from the library" when I try to play a movie and this is happening to all 3100+ movie files and I cant even make the scraper start from scratch so please tell mw what I did wrong because as i was told KODI did obviuosly keep a backup but I cannot play anything now.

Please help.

Regards,
Doug.
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