Migrate All Movies to a Different Hard Drive (1 Viewer)

[clobber]

Hi,

I need to migrate all of my movies to a different hard drive. Both the source and destination hdd are local to my HTPC. What is the best way to do this? I'm hoping to not have to re-import everything and I dont want to lose the watched status etc.

thanks

 

[fforde]

Before you start moving anything, go into the Moving Pics config to the Movie Importer tab. Highlight the import path that will be going away and click the down arrow next to the remove button and click "Toggle Replaced". Shut down MediaPortal and move everything over. Restart MediaPortal and add a new import path where you movies are now located. A scan should trigger and everything should automatically be reassigned to their new locations.

I would back up my database first as well, just in case.

 

[clobber]

Thanks, I'll try that. By backing up the database I assume you mean just making copy of the db3 file?

 

[fforde]

Yes, just make a copy of the db3 file. I don't think you will have any problems but better to have a backup and not need it than to need it and not have it.

 

[Dodgy Bob]

Whenever I've moved stuff around in the past I've just started MovingPictures config. and left it sitting there whilst I moved the files. Worked fine.

 

[clobber]

Worked like a charm following fforde's guidance. Thanks!

 

[sparky21]

Can I ask please, that w get a little more function around this? Moving an entire directory is fine and glad to read that this is included.

My issue is kinda the same. Two major directories with movies, that I would now like to break out and store by year. The issue is of course that that means moving only some of the files out of the current directory. Moving Pictures would then treat the "moved" individual files as new and I would therefore loose any of the information about what has been watched and not etc.

Thoughts?

 

[RoChess]

Can I ask please, that w get a little more function around this? Moving an entire directory is fine and glad to read that this is included.

My issue is kinda the same. Two major directories with movies, that I would now like to break out and store by year. The issue is of course that that means moving only some of the files out of the current directory. Moving Pictures would then treat the "moved" individual files as new and I would therefore loose any of the information about what has been watched and not etc.

Thoughts?

Aside from the fact that you can secure your watched status via the Trakt and/or Follw.it plugin(s), you can move an imported file between active MovPic import files at anytime. If you move it with MovingPictures open/running, then you just have to make sure that the 'move' action can occur instant. Otherwise the entry in database might get deleted first and then re-added as new.

So the safest way to 'move' a file is to do this with MovPic not open/running and use MovPic config as the easiest way to verify that the moved files were detected as such. When you switch to the "Movie Manager" tab, all the movies that had their path location updated will show up in the list via 'red' color so they are easy to spot. You can then select the movie entry and switch to the "File Info" to see the updated path.

Moving from "X:\Import-Path" to "X:\Import-Path\2012" can be done by drag-and-drop (or CTRL+X and CTRL+V) instantly, so you can do these moves with MovPic running, but I would advice to do them outside just to be on the safe side (and as usually make a backup of your movingpictures.db3 before you make any big changes like this, so you can undo/restore them easy in the unlikely event something does go wrong).

If you are moving from "X:\Folder\Example Movie (2010).avi" to "Y:\2010\Example Movie (2010).avi", then just make sure that "Y:\2010" or "Y:\" is an active import path before you move the file over. And because the move from one drive to another will not exactly be 'instant', do this without MovPic open/running.

Enjoy.

PS: Test/Try it with like 5 movies first, if that works to your satisfaction, then move them all.
PPS: The red list entries inside MovPic config will return to normal color when you close MovPic config and re-open it, so that the list is repopulated.

 

[fforde]

Can I ask please, that w get a little more function around this? Moving an entire directory is fine and glad to read that this is included.

My issue is kinda the same. Two major directories with movies, that I would now like to break out and store by year. The issue is of course that that means moving only some of the files out of the current directory. Moving Pictures would then treat the "moved" individual files as new and I would therefore loose any of the information about what has been watched and not etc.

Thoughts?

Moving files should be mostly seamless, if you have Moving Pictures watching both the source path and the destination things should move over automatically whether Moving Pictures was running at the time or not. Just make sure you do not remove the old path from Moving Pictures until after you have moved everything over and you have relaunched MediaPortal.

It is not always required but to be safe it's also a good idea to mark an old import path as "Replaced" before you start moving things (see above). All this really does is preserve movie info even if Moving Pictures thinks your stuff has gone away which can occur if the root directory of your original import path is gone.

TL;DR Add your new locations to the importer. Move your files. Verify Moving Pictures has updated them. Remove the old import path. Before you start, flag the old path as "Removed" just to be safe.

 

[obelisk3847]

I have a very large collection of about 1300 movies on 12 sources and was/have migrated them onto a Linux Greyhole server so I am now down to 2 sources. The procedure of marking drives for removal is quite straight forward but I ended up having about 200 to 250 movies that were not detected. When I looked in the database they were all VIDEO_TS.IFO file entries that did not have hash values. It seems like the MKV files which represent the bulk of my collection were fine though.

I actually ended up with double entries because the original entries were effectively orphaned and the movies on the new path were detected as new. My ultimate solution was to role back the database (I had a backup) and turn off the gateway on the PC so it could talk to the Greyhole server but not any of the Internet Scrapers which gave me time to clean up the database with SQL without getting duplicate entries.

Strangely enough it wasn't 100% of my DVD based movies using VIDEO_TS.IFO orphaned as some of them were detected on the new path even though they didn't have a hash entry. I was curious what is the mechanism you use to compare the database entry to the file system entry if hash is not available. Also, has anyone else had any of these issues or is it more likely something specific to my database. I tried it 2 or 3 times and noticed that it was always the same movies that were orphaned so not sure if that provides anything of use. I think I still have copies somewhere of the database at baseline and the database with the orphaned entries should you like to see it.