Problem with External Hard Drives

[daci92]

At this moment i have connected two external drives with 3TB Audio and Video materials but i cant get them to work .
Manage drives reads them but i cannot get any of the data inside them ,even audio video options dont find anythin

[bongowongo]

USB connection? LAN? E-sata?

[daci92]

They are both USB connection

[sambuca]

Afaik, you need to use the "LinuxMCE directory structure" and move your existing media around to the correct directories. The wiki has more details about this.

best regards,
sambuca

[tschak909]

Hi.

I would strongly discourage you from connecting USB disks to your Core or Core/Hybrid, as USB disks consume CPU time in order to function, and the combination of running UpdateMedia (which is accessing the MySQL database) and running your USB disk(s) on the same machine, will undoubtedly raise your iowait percentage to raise to the point where the CPU is WAITING on the USB disks to finish their I/O, which blocks other I/O related processes.

This can manifest itself in many ways, such as the orbiter crashing when updating the Orbiters in a room when watching TV (because of the database accesses required to populate the TV guide), to slow media list viewing, etc. But basically, it is a _VERY_ bad idea to attach USB disks to a Core or Core/Hybrid.

It _IS_ OK to connect them to media directors and other workstations, however.

-Thom

[daci92]

Afaik, you need to use the "LinuxMCE directory structure" and move your existing media around to the correct directories. The wiki has more details about this.

best regards,
sambuca

I use LinuxMCE directory structure from the begining .With the correct directories you mean the directories from the internal hard drive ?
If it's like that i cant coz like i said i have 3TB on external for now ,but i have 160GB internal disk .

[daci92]

Hi.

I would strongly discourage you from connecting USB disks to your Core or Core/Hybrid, as USB disks consume CPU time in order to function, and the combination of running UpdateMedia (which is accessing the MySQL database) and running your USB disk(s) on the same machine, will undoubtedly raise your iowait percentage to raise to the point where the CPU is WAITING on the USB disks to finish their I/O, which blocks other I/O related processes.

This can manifest itself in many ways, such as the orbiter crashing when updating the Orbiters in a room when watching TV (because of the database accesses required to populate the TV guide), to slow media list viewing, etc. But basically, it is a _VERY_ bad idea to attach USB disks to a Core or Core/Hybrid.

It _IS_ OK to connect them to media directors and other workstations, however.

-Thom

Hey Thom

It is ok ,i will not connect them directly when i will complete the system ,this is just test period ,i'm not sure if i will use MCE .
I just want to see how the things will work , if it's ok i will buy NAS and i will have like 10TB inside .
If it's not ok why i would spend $600 for NAS .

What do you mean by media directors?Another pc which will control the media?

/Daci

[JoakimL]

A Media Director is a basic piece of the LMCE architecture. Check http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Media_director for more info.

/Joakim

[daci92]

A Media Director is a basic piece of the LMCE architecture. Check http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Media_director for more info.

/Joakim

Ok i get it  ,thanx.


So can somebody help me how to get the files from the external disks on the mce but when they are directly connected coz i don't have another pc at the moment to tryout the media director

[JoakimL]

If performance is the issue I'd suggest to try the following:
Move all your files into a temporary directory on your USB drives, eg. /mnt/device/49/tmpmedia
Create a lock file which will inhibit the media update daemon to see your files, eg.
 touch /mnt/device/49/tmpmedia.folderlock
Now move a few media files into the LMCE structure on your USB drive, e.g. into /mnt/device/49/public/data/videos
Wait for the media update daemon to do its job and look into the web admin, media browser to see if your files pop up.

/Joakim

[daci92]

If performance is the issue I'd suggest to try the following:
Move all your files into a temporary directory on your USB drives, eg. /mnt/device/49/tmpmedia
Create a lock file which will inhibit the media update daemon to see your files, eg.
 touch /mnt/device/49/tmpmedia.folderlock
Now move a few media files into the LMCE structure on your USB drive, e.g. into /mnt/device/49/public/data/videos
Wait for the media update daemon to do its job and look into the web admin, media browser to see if your files pop up.

/Joakim

Finally nice answer , i will try it in Monday coz  the computer and the drives are in my office ,we will see what will happend

[daci92]

Closed issue ,the problem was that all my files were in folders that are not from MCE's directory structure ,when i move some files they are finally found in the system.
I have a problem now that sometimes the drives are not recognized but i guess that's normal with my kind of work.
Thanks ppl.