Additional Recording Drives

[atamas]

My 300GB drive is just not big enough. I record a bunch of shows for the kids plus I get behind watching some of my shows.

It would be great if we could have a some logic added that will check a hard drive and if there is not enough space on it to just record it over to the next one.

I know of two possible options that could help but neither quite work for me. First is to use some kind of plugin that archives the files but I found that that removes them from the main programs view. Long term that did not work because I forgot about the other recordings.

Then there's an option to make a dynamic drive but I couldn't figure out how to do that and keep the current recordings. And what concerned me more is that if one of the drives fails then everything is lost. Also, I am not sure if I can share that drive which for me is important because I have two networked PCs (in the bedrooms) that play the recordings thru GB-PVR.

I'm happy to hear any other options and suggestion to help with the space situation. Thanks for your help.

[djtaylor]

Then there's an option to make a dynamic drive but I couldn't figure out how to do that and keep the current recordings. And what concerned me more is that if one of the drives fails then everything is lost. Also, I am not sure if I can share that drive which for me is important because I have two networked PCs (in the bedrooms) that play the recordings thru GB-PVR.

Sharing it isn't a problem but yes your other concerns are valid although possibly misguided. Right now what happens if you lose the drive with your recordings? answer, you lose the recordings so adding another drive just maintains the same problem.

The only way to increase capacity is to either:-

Add a drive, Stripe, Volume Set or RAID5 which at least gives you drive redundancy if that's important.

One thing that you could do although it would be a bit messy would be to create a mount point. In disk management, create an empty folder on your recordings drive and then mount the new drive in that location. What will happen is that you'll have a folder which will be the junction to the new drive. Not quite sure how you're going to make use of it mind you because gbpvr doesn't seem to have that ability to direct recordings to a specific folder in that way. Maybe someone else can offer something useful?

David.

[DoPeFiSh]

you could have an Archive drive to put the unviewed shows on another drive, should work for now and free up space on the record drive......

[darisb]

Starting with Windows 2003 and XP (but possibly earlier) rather than assigning a new drive a drive letter you can assign the new drive as an "empty NTFS folder" on an existing drive. Certainly not the most elegant solution, but it is an option.