Running Out of Space, What Are My Options? (1 Viewer)

[jfirth8187]

Hi all, I know this has been covered before but none of the threads have given me the option that I need.

I've got a Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB drive which is coming to the end of it's capacity, only a few Gb's left. I want to buy another one of these drives as I've had good reliability with them.

Therefore, how can I put another drive into my HTPC and link folders on my main drive to a folder on the second drive.

The reason why I want to do this is I only want to browse to one folder on my main drive for Movies, one for TV Series, one for Music, etc. This will make it easier to maintain for me and easier for everybody to browse for info through the main sections in MP. Really for TV Series and others it doesn't matter.

I've heard of jump links or something for linking folders in windows so that a folder on Drive C: directs and expands itself automatically because it has now the linked to a folder on Drive D:

If I do this will it effect the drive space viewed in windows or MP via 'Drive Free Space' plugin.

If I'm looking for the wrong solution here please let me know and I'll browse through the different threads for dedicated servers with RAID etc.

I'm running a single client/server setup running Vista 32 SP1, see PC specs below.

Thanks all in advance

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

If you use MP-TVSeries or Moving Pictures, it does not matter where the folders are situated, as you always get a database view within MP's GUI, thats all the folders that are scanned by these 2 plugins.

 

[Bagal]

You could just copy your movies or tv-series folder over to the new drive i.e. if both were using 500gig on the first drive, moving one over to the new drive would then leave you 500gig free on both drives.

Personally though, I would do what PD says and is what I do myself.

 

[jfirth8187]

Yes i agree because of the plugins I can store films of tv series anywhere I want. But if I have music in directories on different drive will they all show in one location with Music in MP?

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Because of the way Music files are displayed, I would keep them all in one location, especially considering there file size is next to nothing on a 1tb drive.

Unless of course you have them arranged in genre's and then database view may be what suites you best, rather than shares.

Personall have never liked any other view bar shares for music.

 

[akajester]

Hi all, I know this has been covered before but none of the threads have given me the option that I need.

I've got a Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB drive which is coming to the end of it's capacity, only a few Gb's left. I want to buy another one of these drives as I've had good reliability with them.

Therefore, how can I put another drive into my HTPC and link folders on my main drive to a folder on the second drive.

The reason why I want to do this is I only want to browse to one folder on my main drive for Movies, one for TV Series, one for Music, etc. This will make it easier to maintain for me and easier for everybody to browse for info through the main sections in MP. Really for TV Series and others it doesn't matter.

I've heard of jump links or something for linking folders in windows so that a folder on Drive C: directs and expands itself automatically because it has now the linked to a folder on Drive D:

If I do this will it effect the drive space viewed in windows or MP via 'Drive Free Space' plugin.

If I'm looking for the wrong solution here please let me know and I'll browse through the different threads for dedicated servers with RAID etc.

I'm running a single client/server setup running Vista 32 SP1, see PC specs below.

Thanks all in advance

I'm not sure what format your video files are in, but alot of the downloaded files are very poorly encoded. For instance, I grabbed some 1080p mkv's 15gb in size! I run them through XVID4PSP with the Q21 Ultra encoding from mkv to mkv. I've been able to get those files down to about 10gb in size doing this and the quality looks identical! Also, the re-encoding makes the files 100% DXVA compliant. It can take up to 12 hours per movie on a dual core cpu, but it's worth it for the space savings in the end.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Also, the re-encoding makes the files 100% DXVA compliant.

That seems to be quite common with Blu-Ray rips, the guys that do it, just do not seem to realise they break dxva by using bad software to do the encoding.

Xvid4PSP is fine as long as it does not crash, which unfortunately it seems to do 50% of the time, and as you say 6-12 hrs to encode is a long time

 

[akajester]

Also, the re-encoding makes the files 100% DXVA compliant.

That seems to be quite common with Blu-Ray rips, the guys that do it, just do not seem to realise they break dxva by using bad software to do the encoding.

Xvid4PSP is fine as long as it does not crash, which unfortunately it seems to do 50% of the time, and as you say 6-12 hrs to encode is a long time

I've never had it crash on me, not once. And I've re-encoded over 100 BD rips with it so far. Maybe it's because I'm using XP yet? *knock on wood*.

Hey, even if you re-encode 3 files in one weekend, that can free up 15gb of space. It's worth it, if you're not in a hurry.