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[rolf_eigenheer]

We're not going to make any changes, so please adjust your setup as required.  I'll close this thread later today.

I understand, you do not want to make any changes.

Before closing this thread, could you answer the question from above:
Is there a way to configure MC not to access files when there is no need for playback or explicit reindexing/thumbnailing.

( ) Yes, this can be done by turning this and that option off....
( ) No. There is no need for such an option. A 'good' hardware lets rotate every drive for all the time - no matter how long it has not been used.

[JimH]

If your drives are going to sleep on the NAS (aka HDD hibernation) after a couple of minutes, I'd look into increasing that to around an hour instead (or you can disable it if you have hard drives specifically used for 24/7 NAS applications).

Of course, MC will appear "locked up" when the drives are spinning up, and that's considered normal. How long it appears this way depends on both the amount of time it takes to wake the HDD/NAS back up and the overall amount of time it takes over the network/LAN (depending on the speed of your network). This is especially true if you have multiple drives storing your media, with each one having to "wake up". I would *highly* recommend looking into consolidating all your media on one HDD if possible too, just to avoid that type of issue.

This is good advice.

[rolf_eigenheer]

During the last days I tried to implement everything what has been suggested regarding this issue. Here my findings:

- Having all on a single drive.
This would be the best choice. Once this drive is up and running, there will be no reason for any other drive to spin up. This only works, as long as all the data, refererenced by the db, fits on a single hdd. With 60TB my library won't fit on a single drive.

- Running all referenced drives all day long
This also would work. But this requires drives which are specified for 7x24 operation. Also the NAS must provide an option for disabling hdd sleep. Mine does not. I think NAS supplier have a good reason for sending drives to sleep.

- Setting up a windows server which will allow to run a all drives with no sleep. Sorry, this seems to be an overkill!

- Choosing the longest possible sleep delay
I selected 5 hrs, which is the longest my NAS allows. Once I have opened all the different views, there will be no  more blocking. But every evening when I come home and start MC, all the drives are sleeping again. So I have to wait (frozen GUI, windows ask for killing the app) several times (depending on the count of drives) for 10 to 15 seconds each.   

- Find the optimum MC configuration
To give MC no reason to access a drive while just browsing the DB i did the following:
Rebuild all missing thumbnails
Disabled auto-import in background
Disabled Display missing files in lists
Disabled Show track tooltips
.. did I miss any?

This configuration made things better. Not perfect, but better. Instead of beeing blocked up to typically 6 times while browsing my database, this now happens once or twice.
Windows resource monitor constantly shows some minimal traffic between MC (nothing played, no user activities) and my NAS (approximatly 500B/s).
I'd be glad to get more advice how to use MC optimally.

I believe this could be interesting for any user owning an archive which grows over the time by buying additional drives whenever there is a need for.

[blgentry]

I have an idea...

How about you write a tiny little batch file that launches MC.  But before it launches MC, it does a "dir" on every drive in your NAS.  That way, all drives are woken up each time you start MC.  Seems like that would mask a lot of this behavior, yet allow your drives to sleep on their regular schedule.  You seem to stop and start MC each "session", so this would probably work for your workflow.

Just my silly idea.

Brian.

[rolf_eigenheer]

I have an idea...

How about you write a tiny little batch file that launches MC.  But before it launches MC, it does a "dir" on every drive in your NAS.  That way, all drives are woken up each time you start MC.  Seems like that would mask a lot of this behavior, yet allow your drives to sleep on their regular schedule.  You seem to stop and start MC each "session", so this would probably work for your workflow.

Just my silly idea.

Brian.

Thanks Brian. Not the worst idea I heard. If no other solution helps, I'll go this way. But I'm still hoping that someone finds out what MC does on my drives. And once we know it, we probably can stop it. What I need next is a logger which lists any file/directory request from MC to the address of my NAS. Any suggestion?

[tij]

well ... you can unmap  drives that you rarely use ... that way they will stay sleep until you manually map them again ... create a batch file to remap them less you forget drive letter they supposed to map to

since you rarely use them ... thus should not be big inconvenience

personally ... after losing several USB drives that were running 24/7 ... i just invested in server grade hardware and software for NAS

[rolf_eigenheer]

well ... you can unmap  drives that you rarely use ... that way they will stay sleep until you manually map them again ... create a batch file to remap them less you forget drive letter they supposed to map to

since you rarely use them ... thus should not be big inconvenience

personally ... after losing several USB drives that were running 24/7 ... i just invested in server grade hardware and software for NAS

What do you mean by Unmap? Remove drive letter? I use UNC paths. I would have to change the access rights in my NAS before and after playing a movie. I'd rather go down to the basement and plug in or unplug the HDD. That would work. Is this really the best thing you can do with MC?

[tij]

What do you mean by Unmap? Remove drive letter? I use UNC paths. I would have to change the access rights in my NAS before and after playing a movie. I'd rather go down to the basement and plug in or unplug the HDD. That would work. Is this really the best thing you can do with MC?

yes ... basically remove drive letter ... disconnect network driver in Windiws ... you can create batch file that reconnects to it with same drive letter so you dont have to renember which drive letter it was map to

it cumbersome ... but as you rarely use that druve ... mught be wirth whike if no other solution.exists

without knowing what MC is accessing ... hard to find a solution

where are your covers for movies and albums are stored?

[Moe]

Instead of remapping/disconnecting drives/etc.  You could use the Rename, Move & Copy Files tool.  Use the update database to point to a new location (no file rename, move or copy) option and then just change drive letter from the legit drive letter to a nonsense one.  Then when you want to restore the files just swap them back. 

That said, I really wish someone from JRiver would answer this question "Is there a way to configure MC not to access files when there is no need for playback or explicit reindexing/thumbnailing."  If it has been answered and I missed it, my apologies.

[JimH]

That said, I really wish someone from JRiver would answer this question "Is there a way to configure MC not to access files when there is no need for playback or explicit reindexing/thumbnailing."

We make the development team available for a lot of dialog here, but the level of detail you might want is not always reasonable.

You could turn on logging and probably learn a lot.

[RoderickGI]

G'Day Rolf,

I just read that you were experienced in relational databases, which means you are pretty capable and detail-oriented. I thought your name indicated you are an engineer as well, but Google translates "eigenheer" as "own army"! Maybe Google got that wrong. Whether it means engineer or own army, I think you should be capable of and need to do the work to track this down, as us users don't know explicitly, and the developers are busy improving the software. Which is good.

I actually think that your question;

Is there a way to configure MC not to access files when there is no need for playback or explicit reindexing/thumbnailing.

is a reasonable one. But with all the functionality in MC, it would take a while for a developer to answer the question. I suspect that whatever is waking your drives is a core part of MC, and can not be turned off with a setting. MC does so much in the background. But Windows also does a lot of what happens with disks. It could be that Windows is the culprit here.

What I need next is a logger which lists any file/directory request from MC to the address of my NAS. Any suggestion?

As Jim mentions, you can learn a lot from the MC log files. What it is doing, what files it is accessing, and so on. But not everything is logged, and I suspect that the activity waking your drives isn't. But worth a look.

A "better" way may be to install one or more of the Microsoft Sysinternals applications, and monitor what drives and files MC accesses when it wakes your drives.

I think the DiskMon utility may give you what you want to know, or at least start the process. It may not be granular enough. One of the other applications, perhaps Process Monitor may provide more hints. Again, worth a look.

Of course, you may not be able to get down to enough detail to fix the issue. Certainly, you won't get down to MC settings levels. But you may learn something to help in your situation.

[rolf_eigenheer]

Job 38:11 "Thus far you shall come, but no farther..."

It seems that we come to an end here. The GUI blocking initallly described hasn't vanished, but happens not that much anymore.
- turned off as many automated tasks as possible
- built any thumbnails
- deleted all references to inexisting files

What is really interesting: Sometimes there is no GUI blocking when changing the view - even I hear starting a drive. Probably MC can handle drive drive access in background and fails only when too many drives are affectetd at a time. Who knows.


@Roderick : It's not a misspelled engineer - it's just my name. 

[RoderickGI]

@Roderick : It's not a misspelled engineer - it's just my name. 

I should have thought of that! Not many people use their real name on forums.