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[audunth]

Hi,

I have run out of space on my C (Windows) drive, and have to move my Media Center library to another drive. I cloned it to the drive I wanna move it to, but I can't delete the default library, and I can't find anywhere to specify the location of the default library. In earlier versions of MC, I used to have my library on a separate drive, but somewhere in one of the updates over the years, it has moved itself to my C drive without my knowing about it.

[JimH]

The wiki has a topic called Moving Files .

[audunth]

Not trying to move any media files, but the MC Main Library itself. I made a clone on another drive, and loaded the clone, but the Library Wiki page says the default MC library can't be deleted. I used to always have this on a separate disk.

My Windows drive currently has about 20 MB left, which leads to all kinds of errors. The MC library takes about 1 GB, and my storage drives have at least 50-60 GB of free space that I want to use until I can buy a bigger SSD for my operating system. Is it not possible anymore to have the  MC Main Library on a different disk than the program itself?

[JimH]

MC's database should be on the same drive if possible.

You could make a new library and use it.

[Hendrik]

You can use a different library for your media (ie. simply adding a new one in MC), and reset the default library to basically empty, so it doesn't use any space. That really has no downsides, and lets you do whatever you want.
The library itself really shouldn't be 1GB in size though, unless you have tens of thousands of files. Maybe Cover Art might take up some space, but you can change the location of that at least.

[swiv3d]

Moving the library by adding a new one and clearing the main library probably won't save much space on the C drive if the thumbnail folder is big and I can't see any way to move this anywhere as you can with the cover art folder.
My library looks like this in terms of size
library folder 16mb
cover art 428mb
thumbnails 582mb

[audunth]

I always used to have my Main Library on another drive and would much prefer it that way. I regularly make an image of my Windows drive and so I want to keep user files like documents, media files, MC Libraries etc. on a separate drive because if I revert to an earlier version of the OS because of a problem, I still have the latest version of my documents and user files. Even the My Documents folder is on another drive, which Windows will let you do.

I did think about the workaround of emptying the Main Library and using the new one, I just find it strange that a program this advanced should need a workaround like that (I find it a bit messy to have an empty library hanging around), especially since it didn't in some earlier versions, which let you specify the Main Library folder. My cover art, import folders, cache and temp folders are already on another drive. Any reason the Main Library need to be on the same disk as MC?

My library has 15000+ files and is 867 MB in size on disk.

[dtc]

The recommendation is that the library be on a fast, internal disk. The concern is performance.  Some people try to move the library to an external usb disk or to a NAS and performance typically suffers.  An internal solid state disk would be a nice choice.

[swiv3d]

Sometimes there is a need for less speed and more need for flexibiliity of use, as is the case for the OP.

[dtc]

I do not think the OP specified whether the new disk is internal or external. Internal is clearly preferred, if possible, for performance reasons.

[RoderickGI]

(I find it a bit messy to have an empty library hanging around), especially since it didn't in some earlier versions, which let you specify the Main Library folder.

That must have been before my time. I'm pretty sure since MC18 the default library has always had to be in the "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center xx\Library" directory. I just checked back to MC11 in 2004, and I can't see anything indicating that was changed in that time. Cloning a library to another location and clearing the local library would leave a very small empty library as the default. That shouldn't be an issue.

My library has 15000+ files and is 867 MB in size on disk.

That can't be right. I have nearly 38,000 files and the Library is only 14.5MB, with another 336MB of thumbnails. Are the numbers above what MC reports, or just the Windows Explorer size of the MC24 directory "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 24"? Because that directory in total is about 1.77GB on my HTPC, with just the Plugins folder about 350MB, and the cache is 950MB.

I know you have moved the cache, but I assume that was using the setting at "Options > File Location > Conversion Cache". Unfortunately, that doesn't include the Theatre View Background cache found at "C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 24\Cache\Theatre View Background", which you can't move. However, if you have a Custom Theme in Theatre View you could switch to "No Theme" and delete/move/backup the Custom Theme files. You should then be able to delete the contents of the Theatre View Background directory without causing any problem. When you turn Themes on again later the images would just be downloaded again. I don't think you will get any background images at all with the Theme set to "(No Theme)", but you could also turn off the theme "Online Media Slideshow" just to be sure. That should free up a lot of space.

Both the Thumbnails files and the Theatre View Background cache need to be on a fast disk, and preferably on the local disk where MC is installed, unless you wish to see a significant degradation of performance. In the case of the Thumbnail files, the whole point is to improve speed by having all thumbnails in a highly indexed file that allows quick retrieval of small versions of Cover Art images.



Regardless, you have a much bigger problem than the space MC is using. A hard disk, any hard disk, should never have less than, at a minimum, 10% free space. You are well beyond that. At 20MB free space left you are lucky that Windows is running at all. By all means, move the MC Library, but you need to find a lot more stuff you can move off the boot drive. Time to uninstall some unused programs, run Disk Cleanup, and move all documents, images, etc. to the other drives until you can replace the SSD with a larger version. It sounds like you need bigger storage drives as well, as 50-60GB free isn't much these days.

[audunth]

Sorry, I made the error of right clicking the wrong folder when checking disk size of my library!   It is 6 MB so size isn't an issue after all. It's the whole Media Center 24 folder that is almost 900 MB, with Cache, Thumbnails and Plugins taking up most of the space.

Anyway, all my drives are internal. I have 2 SSD drives, one for the Windows and one for user files, documents, games and backup. They are equally fast. Theoretically, if MC can load the program from one drive and the library from another drive simultaneously, it could start up even faster, but I doubt it would be detectable in practice. I also have 3 big drives for all my media files.

I would still like to keep the Windows partition as clean as possible with only the OS and installed program files, and the user files/documents etc. on another drive or partition.

I did come up with another workaround, which is make a linked folder (or Directory Junction as Windows calls it) to a folder on another drive and move the library files there. So MC still thinks it's in the AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 24\Library folder, but infact that folder is just a link to another folder on another drive. So I can do that with the Cache and Thumbnails folders too to save some space. I will obviously get myself a new bigger SSD soon, but right now, half a gig of extra space will at least let my system work without errors all over the place due to zero free space on the system drive.

I might have been using another library than the default Main Library back then, can't really remember, but know I used a different location for my library at least until v19 or 20. I found libraries from those versions on my other drive.

Another couple of space related questions (although these aren't a concern on the Windows drive): Is it possible to not keep any of the downloaded updates? I really don't need the 5 latest update files, not even the last one as soon as it's installed. I can redownload an older version from this forum if I need to roll back. And is there a way to specify how many automatic backups of the library to keep? Or how often to auto backup?

[RoderickGI]

Windows would probably allow you to move the whole %AppData% directory if you wanted to, but I haven't looked into that because I have too many programs that don't work well if not installed on the C:\ drive in default locations.

I don't know of any way to limit the number of backups MC makes or keeps, but you can change the location they are saved to. They are pretty small as well, so not a hard disk hog.

Under "Help > Update Channels > Downloads to Keep" you can specify as few as 5, as you found. If you search the registry for "Downloads to Keep" you will find a few related settings, such as;
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 24\Installer\Release Channel - Downloads To Keep

You could try setting that to 0 or 1. No guarantees that will work, or won't harm something. Up to you. But if you edit that value in MC, it does update the value in the Registry as expected. So, could work. Of course that setting only applies to automatic updates. You could also turn off automatic updates and download-install-delete the updates manually as you require.

[audunth]

According to Microsoft you can't move the AppData folder, but by creating Directory Junctions, you can move any folder to a different drive, make a link where the folder used to be, and the program that uses it won't know the difference. At least that's how I understand it :-) Maybe it won't work for all programs, I haven't researched it that far. It seems to work with MC at least.

I know the backups are small and I have them on a different drive, but I found backups there back to 2011 (left by earlier versons obviously) so I'll check the folder a little more often from here :-D Just curious if the Auto backups could be configured somewhere, and how they work, but no big deal.

I found the registry key, but didn't wanna mess with it in case of unstability. Just thought since there already IS an option for it, it might as well have a 0 or 1 choice as well. No biggie either, since the download folder can be specified.

[swiv3d]

Liniked folders are very useful - especially if you use one-drive (an episode I would prefer to delete from memory). The registry also contains a series of addresses for the MC Libraries - I must confess to not being brave enough to tinker with them though.

[audunth]

So, I've now got myself another drive. I installed Windows 10 on it, and also another partition that was on my Windows 7 drive, so now I have two system drives, Windows 7 and Windows 10 with plenty of space. That way, if something doesn't work (which if it happens, ALWAYS happens when I have friends over, warm pizza on the table, and about to watch a movie!) I'm never more than a reboot away. Now, since I moved my main library to a third drive, is it a good idea to point MC24 in Windows 7 and MC24 in Windows 10 to that same library, so that when I add new files it's synced between the two? Or can that cause problems? Obviously I'll be very careful about running the same version of MC on both installations, but is there a better way to sync the two installations? I don't feel like doing every import twice...

And another question, the settings will remain separate even if I use the same library, right? It's only when I back up/restore the settings get transferred with the library (if I choose to)?

[RoderickGI]

Correct on both counts: Should be exactly the same version, and settings remain with the Windows installation.

Backing up from one installation and restoring to another makes more sense than trying to keep versions and settings in sync identically. That would give you a bit of leeway.

What you are suggesting might work okay, but you are on your own in doing that. It wouldn't work for Thumbnails if you hadn't already "moved" the AppData directory. Obviously, JRiver wouldn't support it, and no-one else is going to have the same installation to confirm functionality.


Ultimately though, MC works better if the library is on the fastest disk you have, and so once you have Windows 10 stable and you are comfortable with it, I would advise moving the library to the new SSD. Your call though.

[audunth]

An update here:

I've now been running my setup for quite a while, and had no problems with it. I got a new 500GB SSD, and made one partition for Windows 10, and one bigger partition for my games/files/documents etc.
Both W7 and W10 points to the same MC Library folder through Directory Junctions (set up using the mklink command). Whenever I switch between Windows 7 and 10 I always make sure I update MC to the latest version.

No matter how well Windows 10 is working, there is no such thing as a 100% stable PC, and therefor I will ALWAYS keep a backup installation on a different drive, in case of system failure. And as long as MC supports Windows 7, I might as well keep my old Windows 7 installation as the backup. This way if my computer fails due to a new driver, update, MC version etc. I am always just a restart from starting the movie of the night. And let's face it, if it ever fails there is a 90+% chance there are several friends over and hot pizza on the table. That's just Murphy's Law.

Moving to MC 25 now that it's available, so let's hope my setup works equally flawless on the new version