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[InquiringMind]

I have an old version of JRiver but abandoned it long ago because it didn't meet my needs, and would like to know if the latest version does.  (I mainly use Windows currently, but would like to move to Linux if that makes any difference).
 
The problem is, I have around 10TB of media files stored mostly on USB drives.  I would like all indexing and text documentation to be stored on my C: drive or other permanently mounted drive, but when actually accessing a media file I would like JRiver to ask me to "Please Mount Volume xxxxxx".
 
I do NOT want it to copy or move any media files to my C: drive (it doesn't have the space for all of them, and in the case of large files I want to avoid the wait), and I don't want it to forget the indexing information when the foreign drive is dismounted or otherwise made unavailable (that was the problem with the old version I have).
 
I'm not as familiar with Linux as Windows, but I believe Linux allows linking an external drive into a local one, which could be a workaround, but that's rather clunky, and I'm not sure it would help with JRiver indexing.
 
Because I couldn't find any reference to this issue, I'm asking here hoping for a "yes you can do that" or "no you can't do that" answer rather than spending days experimenting with the latest version.  If the answer is "yes", a hint at where to get started is really all I'm looking for, and I'll try it out.
 
Thanks in advance!

[blgentry]

You might get a bit more help in the MC21 forum since that's the current version now, as of maybe 6 or 8 weeks ago.

My answer is, I'm not sure if MC can do what you are after.  If you import media into MC that lives on an external drive, MC is happy to do that.  It leaves the media on the external drive and knows where it is.  Whenever you want to play it, you click on it's name (or icon or whatever) and MC plays it.  When you unplug the drive, MC can't see it any more.  It knows where the file used to be.  ...and if you set the "fix broken links" setting correctly, it will show you a red minus ( - ) next to the file name, indicating that it can no longer find the file.  We're ok up to this point.

When you look at the properties of the file (or just hover over it), you'll see it's file name.  Let's say your external drive was drive F:.  You'll see F:\Path\To\Some\media\cool_media_file.mp4 .  So you would know that you need to mount drive F, and you'd plug in drive F and everything would work properly.  Here's where it gets weird for me.

If you have several drives (I'm betting you have at least 3, and maybe as many as 8 or 10), do they always get the same drive letter each time?  Can you guarantee that a specific drive will show up as a specific drive letter?  If so, you can easily use MC in this way and just plug in the right drive when you want to access media on that drive.  MC will know the file name, which will tell you which drive it is.

I think that's probably not how Windows works with external drives though.  I think it assigns drive letters dynamically and gives the first letter to the first drive it sees.  I recall that Windows now has some way of mounting drives without drive letters, and using paths instead, sort of like Unix, Linux, and OS X.  I don't know much about that though.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable with Windows and external drives will step in here with some good info.

I guess the summary here is I think it's mostly possible with some specific windows techniques for managing your external drive.  But I don't think there's any way for MC to *tell* you to go mount a specific drive; you'll have to look at the file properties and go mount the drive based on the path name and/or drive letter.

I hope this helps some.

Brian.

[InquiringMind]

Thanks, Brian.  I think you filled in some of the details of why JRiver didn't seem to be useful to me.

Windows will try to reassign a drive to the same letter unless that letter is already taken, in which case it picks the first letter available.  They can be manually reassigned using Disk Management, but that's tedious.  I actually have 9 USB drives for this material, plus several others for backing up various things, plus 15 letters preassigned to various fixed devices, network drives and virtual assignments.  So far as I know, Windows only allows 26 assignments, among the lesser of many reasons I want to move to Linux (I'm using Window 7).  Perhaps the huge drives I read about that are supposed to be coming available in a few years will make things easier, but I doubt it.

Your comment about mount points, though, might be a possibility.  I had forgotten about them because using them is even more tedious -- when you plug in the drive, it immediately assigns a letter which you have to manually remap -- unless there's some shortcut to this I don't know about.  I don't think Windows remembers anything about them.  I'll have to investigate this.

But it seems to me asking the user to mount something should be more general and far more convenient.  For example, you can put an awful lot of mp3 songs on a DVD.  Why couldn't it ask to "Please Insert Volume DVD012" which it knows contains a song you are looking for?  It seems to me adding some user options at the point where it recognizes something is not immediately available should be fairly easy to implement.  Of course, that implies putting the song on DVD012 in the first place (rather than DVD011 or DVD017) which might be a bit more complicated.

Or perhaps it already does this, and I just never ran across it?

[blgentry]

As far as I know, JRiver MC doesn't support any kind of mount prompting for offline media.  Let's talk about a few different strategies for storing a lot of media:

A.  Optical media (DVDs, CDs, etc) or other removable platter media (eg the old ZIP disks).  These are a trap.  Run away, run far away.  Management is a nightmare.  Removable media tends to be fragile *and* prone to failure due to age.  I see these types of media as having no place in a primary storage workflow and *nearly* zero functionality in an archival workflow.  Run away.

B.  Lots and lots of smaller drives.  At a certain number, you can manage these by having ALL of them online at the same time.  Three or four drives of 4 or 5 TB each gives you 15 to 20 TB of storage.  It's no big deal to keep 3 or 4 big drives running and plugged in all the time.  USB3 hubs make this convenient and make the wiring less messy.  Consolidating your media onto larger drives can take time if you don't have REALLY good organization to start with.  It gets easier once you have good top level organization.  Moving your media to larger and larger drives is really the way of the future.  Drives will ONLY get larger.  Media tends to get larger also.  My first hard drive was 120 MegaBytes (not Gigs!).   How big was yours?  What about in 10 years?  I plan on moving my media from drive to drive to drive as I get new computers and new external hard drives.  It's what I've been doing for years and I plan to keep doing it.  It works.

C.  Drive arrays.  People with a LOT of media tend to use large drive arrays with hardware RAID built in.  This helps guard against drive failure making you lose some of your media.  It's not a guarantee.  But it's better than having 8 drives full of media with no redundancy.  On the other hand, large drive arrays make doing backups harder.  It's something you have to plan for:  How much storage will you have.   How will it be laid out.  How will you back it up.

I really don't see JRiver adding any offline media features because, frankly, most people with large media collections are already using either a handful of large drives, large drive arrays that direct attach (USB, Thunderbolt, eSATA, etc), or large drive arrays in a NAS box.  I'm not trying to be negative or anything.  Just giving you my perspective and opinions on how large media collections are typically managed in today's computing world.

If I can help you use JRiver with your setup, or help you out with a new setup, I'm here.  Good luck to you. 

Brian.

[ferday]

You can permanently assign drive letters in Windows, there are also third party programs that monitor and enforce but I've found the native windows "change drive letter" to work fine (use higher letters in general)

Honestly (and sincerely, not arguing) it sounds like the OP wants MC to make up for poor storage practice