Modifying Recurring Recordings

[toricred]

I tried the spread setting, but it is not working the way I was hoping. All recording is happening on one drive even though the other drive has almost .5 TB more available. This is causing problems with recordings when I have 4 or 5 HD recordings, another 3 or 4 comskip processes running and watching on a client. I know this is asking a lot for one drive (actually a true hardware raid array), but if I could spread it between two I know it will work since it has before. Is there anything else I can try?

[johnsonx42]

the <DefaultDirectoryChoice>spread</DefaultDirectoryChoice> setting is supposed to work, but I've not personally tried it. It only works for local drives though, it won't work if the drive is a network drive or UNC path.

Post your logs showing recordings that should have gone to other drives and we'll have a look.

[toricred]

They're both local drives. I'm attaching the logs, but since NPVR seems to really prefer having only one drive I'm going to try out DriveBender (DB) to make all my drives appear in a pool and appear to NPVR to be just one drive. That way DB can manage the balancing. Fortunately reversing out of DB isn't that hard if I need to.

[sub]

This "spread" setting only applies to recordings where you haven't explicitly specified where that recording should go.

[toricred]

But I thought that with Advanced Rules I didn't even have the option to specify it. Are you saying that it is specified, but it is forced to "Default"? That would definitely explain what was happening.

[mvallevand]

You should be able to specify it when you create the schedule. Modifying it is the issue.

Martin

[toricred]

I have to put this in writing to remind myself and warn others. DO NOT USE DRIVEBENDER ever again.

This was a total disaster. After about 12 hours my drives completely disappeared. I was able to access them through a back door DB provides, but no other way. I recovered my data and I am back where I was trying to figure out how to do this with two different recording folders. The only good part of this is that I may have discovered why my recordings getting glitchy. I have one drive in one of the two RAID arrays that has a bad spot. I'm working on figuring out exactly which one and then replacing it. It is really frustrating that the RAID controller is not identifying that there is any problem at all, but I will work through it.

One thing I'm looking at now is simply moving all drives into one array. It will mean buying 4 3TB drives, but it will be worth the hassle if I can quit pulling my hair out trying to make this work.

[jimbojones]

I am also having trouble getting the spread setting to work, I have to recording drives listed, and when I schedule recordings I just leave directory setting in recordings screen as default.I probably should mention that I only schedule programs from the tv guide , not from manual recordings or advanced rules screen.

James

[mvallevand]

The problem is that I can't figure out how to create advanced rules inside the GUI. I also am having a problem getting All Channels to work in the GUI. Is there a way around this?

(back to the recurring recordings thread) I'm a bit lost on what your overall goal is. If you are attempting to modify rules to set the recording directory in the GUI, as I first wrote that this a bug that sub needs to address. If spread isn't working that might be a a bug or it might be the design. Spread doesn't necessary mean optimize the recording drives AFAIK.

Martin

[toricred]

Actually I've more or less merged everything into one recording directory now so that issue has become moot. What I have found challenging that is still remaining is when I miss the All Channels when I first create a Recurring Recording then I can't find a way in the GUI to fix this setting. NEWA appears to let me fix this, but if NEWA is corrupting my schedules then I'll have to delete a "bad" recording schedule and create it again.
The other minor issue is that I use my Android tablet for almost everything. I thought using NEWA from my tablet's browser would make this easier. This shouldn't be much of an issue long term once I get everything working right. Now I know what I was doing to mess up the schedules your tool created for me so I can just leave it alone.