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[jgreen]

Does MC currently account for media that is not connected, on a drive that is not connected?  Currently the tiny icons (sometimes known as "Alexicons") are the same for a piece of media that is missing, as they are for a piece of media on a drive that is missing.  Is there no way to account for missing drives  (USB drives) as if they were removable media?

I ask because I'm going crazier trying to tidy up my libraries, when some of the stuff I end up pruning is actually just on drives that are not currently connected.  Help!!     

[glynor]

I do this.  You can, of course, import these files just fine.  I use a custom field called [Offline] (set to 0 or 1) along with a separate [Archive Drive] field (set to a fixed list of my external drives as they're labeled on the shelf), and then filter my views based on these fields.  It's nice because I have a "All Shows" view underneath my regular TV Shows view that lists even stuff that I've put off onto these external disks, and I can quickly and easily find the file I want, check which drive it is on, grab the drive and slap it into my eSATA drive dock.

It would be so perfect...

Unfortunately, MC "accounts" for these external files by removing said media from the database if you aren't really careful to make sure you never, ever connect another drive with the same drive letter (unless you disable Fix Broken Links in the Auto-Import options).  With removable (USB and eSATA) disks, this isn't always easy.

I've asked, repeatedly, for a way to manually mark files as "removable" (to protect them from this) or for Auto-Import to only "Fix Broken Links" for files that live in a watched folder (and Alex chimed in on at least one of my many posts on the subject), but we haven't gotten either yet.

Right now, if you use media on external disks that may or may not be connected at any given time, you have basically three options:

1. Each external drive gets its own separate Library (which means you can't use MC to really manage your "full" library in one place, nor use it to figure out which disk a particular file lives on if you have more than one).
2. Make darn sure your external drives never reuse drive letters (which is a pain and prone to accidental disaster).
3. Keep "Fix Broken Links" or the entire Auto-Import feature disabled.

I choose option three.  I hate it though because my Library gets filled up with lots of broken links (particularly because my recording application auto-deletes certain recordings when I only want to keep the most recent few), and I have to manually go through and fix them myself.

[Matt]

I think it'd be best if you could just import stuff and the program auto-magically hid things on a drive that's not available.

We could store a drive volume ID with each file, and then periodically check for available drives and update the library based on the results.  Network drives and UNC paths would need to be handled a little differently, but I think it could work.

Thoughts? Advice?

[glynor]

As long as you could design "special views" that would not obey this filter, that would be fine.

The main reason I don't want to put the external files in their own separate Libraries (one for each disk) is that I want to use MC to be able to find those files, and look at the full lists of what I have, even when the drive in question isn't attached.

We'd also still need a way to keep them from being removed from the Library if you do plug in a drive that has the same drive letter, but which has different files on it (maybe not even media files, maybe it is just a USB flash drive, or Compact Flash card or something).  So, if you move files off to Drive D, and unplug it.  Then, three weeks later your friend gives you a USB drive with some photos on it they want you to see, if you plug it in and Windows decides (in its infinite wisdom) to call this thumb drive "Drive D", and MC is running in the tray, it will remove all of your "real" drive D files from the Library in a split second.

But, otherwise, that's essentially what I do manually.  I filter the files that live on external drives from most of my "main, regular" views ([Offline]=0 is added to the roots of all of my views).  So, for example, I only ever really see the "full list of all of my movies" by going to Video -> Movies -> All Movies (including Offline) in my library tree.  Likewise, to really see my "master list of series", I go to Video -> TV Shows -> All Shows (including Offline).

If I just go to Video -> Movies, or Video -> TV Shows, then I only see the stuff that is always available (the online storage stuff).

[Scolex]

Forgive me if I am mistaken but when you attach a new drive doesn't Windows always assign the first available drive letter other than A or B if it doesn't have a preexisting designation. If that is the case couldn't you pretty much remove the duplicate letter from happening by assign drive letters to your archive drives starting at Z and moving forward.

[jgreen]

Matt--

I think in this day and age there's still a lot of media residing on removable USB drives.  While auto-import works nicely with removable drives, I want MC to track (and show) ALL my media, not just media that's currently connected.  Typical tasks for UNconnected media might be tagging, enhancing (cover art, artist art, etc) and generally coveting.  I consult MC first when selecting media, and then go looking for the location, connected or not. 

Scolex--

I try to make sure I assisgn specific letters to my removable USB drives, and that I stay away from E,F,G.  This mostly works well, both within windows and with MC, although there have been some hilarious screwups.

[glynor]

If that is the case couldn't you pretty much remove the duplicate letter from happening by assign drive letters to your archive drives starting at Z and moving forward.

I actually assign all of my external hard drives as drive X (via the awesome USBDLM application), which exacerbates the problem with MC.  Since they're always drive X, the files from all of the other drives are always "broken" whenever I plug in one of the drives.

However, using Drive X for all of my external drives is convenient for LOTS of reasons.  The biggest one is just that there aren't enough drive letters in the alphabet.

On my server, I have these permanently mounted drives right now:
C (system and most applications)
D (optical)
E (optical)
F (USB optical duplicator)
M (media RAID)
N (a temporary work space drive used for compression and video editing)
P (my "portable" backup of drive M)
R (my Acronis recovery backup drive)
S (my "secure documents" USB flash drive, which backs up my most critical documents that live in a TrueCrypt container on my U drive)
T (my TV recording drive)
U (my users drive with My Documents and additional apps, since my C drive is a relatively small SSD)
V (my virtual optical drive from Daemon Tools)
W (my "work" RAID, with my professional video work stuff)

Plus, I have one of those 7-in-one media card readers in my PC, which uses drives G, H, I, and J.

So, that's 17 of a possible 26 drive letters used right off the bat.  Then, you have A and B which Windows still thinks are reserved for floppy drives even though no one has those permanently attached (or at all) anymore.  I've hit problems in the past with some applications if you try to use those letters for real drives or network drives, so it is best to not use them.

So, that leaves me with 7 possible drive letters left.

Already, I have these external disks on my shelf or in my bag that I use fairly regularly.

1. archive01-tv (2TB WD Green) - full
2. archive02-movies (2TB WD Green) - full
3. archive03-tv (1.5TB WD Green) - 50% fullish
4. archive04-movies (2TB WD Green) - 10% fullish
5. system_images (2.5TB Seagate) - used for drive images of all of my systems
6. VM_drive (2TB WD Black) - contains a FreeDOS VM, Ubuntu VM, Win98SE VM, two different Win7 VMs, and a Snow Leopard VM
7. portable_edit (2TB WD Black) - I use this drive to bring work home from the office where my video sources are stored on a 6TB RAID and a variety of SAN shares.

And, I have a smattering of USB flash drives of course, including some that are bootable with system utilities, recovery things for Acronis, virus fighting tools, and just "sneakernet" files.  Oh, and the aforementioned TrueCrypt container with my financial records, which needs to be able to be mounted as a drive letter by TrueCrypt when I want to use the contents.

Now, I never need to connect all of those drives at once, but how could I manually assign all of those disks a drive letter and be sure that they'd never overlap when I plug in a random USB flash drive from a friend?  Plus, keeping track of them all (wait, is this one supposed to be drive X or Q) and making sure that all of my different machines use the same drive letters for the same drives would be a huge pain in the butt.  For example, when I want to play one of those files off of my archive03-tv drive (like an episode of Boardwalk Empire from last season) on the HTPC, I go to the shelf, pull the proper drive, and plug it into my drive dock attached to the HTPC.  MC plays the file.  When I want to play it on my laptop, I plug it into the Laptop's drive dock.  If that drive was drive Q, I'd have to manually go to each of my individual machines one at a time with each drive and plug them in and manually change the drive letter (and then what about if I need to reinstall Windows somewhere)...  Yeah, that's not going to happen.  I have 4 different machines I use these on regularly.  That's a whole lot of plugging!

And, of course, I'm out of letters.  So now my only choice is to use clunky named volumes for the drives which don't work with lots of older and stupider applications.  Or, you know, never run out of space again.

So, instead, I use USBDLM to automatically assign all of those numbered "external" drives above as Drive X.  This is easy to do.  USBDLM has lots of ways to detect a drive and permanently assign a particular drive letter to the drive, and it is configured with a simple INI file which I can easily copy around to my other machines (in fact, I store the INI file in Dropbox so I can always get to the latest version if I need it).

Now, I understand that I'm an extreme case.  Most people aren't going to have that many.  However, most people ALSO aren't going to want to be bothered to keep track of it all, and to use a third-party utility like USBDLM.  I bet most people would just plug it in and let Windows assign whatever it wants to (probably E or something) and then use that.  Since they don't change their drives around much, it probably "just works" for a long while.  Until that fateful day that they have the external drive unplugged (maybe they don't have enough USB ports on a laptop) and they plug in a camera card reader that assigns E, F, G, and H.   Once you do that, if you have MC open, and you plug a SD card or Compact Flash card into the wrong slot on the reader, suddenly MC removes every single file on the drive E drive from their entire library if they have the default configuration of MC enabled.

This is not a good plan.

MC is catering to HTPC and video users now.  We have lots of videos, or else we wouldn't be using MC to manage them.  Videos are big.  External hard drives are big and cheap (or they were until the flood, but they will be again).

It isn't that unusual that someone might have 2 or 3 drives they want to use, but not keep connected all the time.  I can't imagine that I'm the only one who wants to hang onto last years season of Game of Thrones, but doesn't want it sucking up (expensive) space on my main online media RAID volume?

Relying on the user to manage arcane and confusing drive letters manually starting with the "highest letter" (fighting windows) isn't a real solution.

[Scolex]

Glynor the number of drives you have nearly renders me speechless, I thought I had alot until I read that list.
C-H: 6 Internal 3.5" HDD
I: BD-RW
J: DVD-RW
X: USB powered 2.5" HDD (travel drive)
Y-Z: 2 eSATA 3.5" HDD
Undefined: Various media cards and USB drives

[glynor]

Glynor the number of drives you have nearly renders me speechless, I thought I had alot until I read that list.

Hah!  I'm a video editor.  We keep Western Digital in business.  Even better (from their perspective), we need the fast, high-margin ones.

I didn't even mention that my Drive M RAID is made up of 6 drives (5 in the RAID and one hot spare).  Nor did I mention this pile of old drives on another shelf:



 

[Scolex]

LOL, I have a pile of unused PATA drives too, thought about building a RAID with them but didn't see the point in having 6 drives that only total 600GB.
Maybe I will come up with a use for them someday. Any ideas computer related or otherwise?

[glynor]

They make good paper weights? 

A bunch of those in the pile are old, small PATA drives, but not all of them.  The one on the top left is actually a 750GB Seagate SATA drive (the very first 750GB drive you could buy, and I paid WAY too much for it).  I retired it because it was acting flaky on me way too often, was out of warranty, and had already been warranty-replaced once anyway.  There are a bunch of other 500GB PATA drives in the pile too from an old PATA-based RAID box I disassembled a year or so ago.

Then there's this one...



That's right.  2GB baby!  Probably paid a pretty penny for that one too, but I don't remember anymore.

I'm mostly keeping them to try to secure wipe them someday (or maybe I'll take Jim's method and drill-press some holes through them).  I have no idea what crazy stuff might be lurking on most of them.

[MrHaugen]

All this drive letters make my eyes hurt.... Why do people still use so many drive letters when we have affordable home SAS expanders, raid enclosures and mount disk as folder options.
I thank my wallet for investing in a SAS expander and 24 drives last year. 20TB x 2 of single drive letter storage beauty. Blazing speed and maximum security. Oh yea.

[Scolex]

Let me start this post with an apology to jgreen for the hijack.

After I asked for suggestions as a use for my stack of basically useless PATA drives, I came up with one myself. I also have some 12v cordless drill batteries that are perfectly good but the drill took a dump and I bought a new 18v. I was thinking why not turn 4 HDD motors into drive motors for a 4WD RC car powered by drill batteries wired in a parallel configuration. What do you think? Sound like a fun project? I would need to get my hands on some servos that can handle the weight but that shouldn't be too difficult.

Mr. Haugen my next step will be to go the expandsion route since I am out of SATA ports on my MoBo, but that may be quite some time as I am getting ready to move and expendable cash flow is nonexistent ATM.

[jgreen]

"Let me start this post with an apology to jgreen for the hijack."

I'll sue!!  I'll sue!!

[Scolex]

Will you settle out of court though? No sense in a lawyer getting a big chunk.

[MrHaugen]

On topic again. As to Matt's suggestion, I have to disagree. I would never want things to be hidden if the media is disconnected or the path is unresolvable. This could add a lot of problems and confusion for people.

People with several disk and one or two external, might not notice the missing media for a period, and keep on using the other media that is connected. No, this have to be marked in a certain way. Much like it is today. But I do find it highly annoying that MC screams at you because it can't tag the files if the media is disconnected. That should be resolved. And as others say, you should be able to tag and fix the media, but wait with the file writing until the drive is connected.

[glynor]

On topic again. As to Matt's suggestion, I have to disagree. I would never want things to be hidden if the media is disconnected or the path is unresolvable. This could add a lot of problems and confusion for people.

I think you're assuming it would be hidden via some complex black-box mechanism.

I assumed that it would be tag-and-filter based.

In other words, if MC sees that a particular referenced-in-the-library drive is detached, it sets a "flag" on it of some kind (in a field).  Then, that field is filtered in the default views ([Removed]=0).  That would be the cleanest way to implement it.  You could just remove the field (remove [Removed]) from the View filters if you want to be able to see all of the files MC knows about, removed or not.  In fact, the filter wouldn't be there at all in your library, unless you reset your views back to the default, I'd guess, so the whole point would be moot.

Like I said above, they'd also have to provide some mechanism to solve the "Fix Broken Links" problem (because you do want it to remove broken links, but not just if the "real" Drive E is disconnected and then you plug in a USB drive that happens to be assigned to Drive E by Windows).  This might not have to be that complex, though... Just make the Fix Broken Links feature only apply to items in a Watched Folder.  If the folder isn't watched, the broken links get left alone (you can remove them manually just like you import them manually).

But that could be separate from the View filtering.  MC already has a way to filter views of files.  I assumed they'd use that.

[Matt]

I think the thing I was suggesting is sort of a big project, so not likely to happen soon.  We're in a tighten-things-up mode instead of an open-new-fronts mode.

If there's some simple change we could make from the original request that would help with the problem but not be a complicated change, let us know.

[glynor]

If there's some simple change we could make from the original request that would help with the problem but not be a complicated change, let us know.

I totally understand.  Are these two things simple?

make the Fix Broken Links feature only apply to items in a Watched Folder.  If the folder isn't watched, the broken links get left alone (you can remove them manually just like you import them manually).

And let us manually alter the [Removable] tag on files (so that the existing Fix Broken Links feature already knows how to avoid them), and we can filter our views using that tag.  We could either just not "watch" the folder, or we could manually tag a particular file (or set of files) as removable and the database would honor it and let us filter using it.

If that isn't simple, then only the second would suffice, though that would rely more on manual user intervention.

[MrHaugen]

The biggest problem I've had in the past was the removal of a disk for a period of time and the nagging of problems with tagging this files. So because of this I would suggest:
A manual way of setting a "removable" tag for a media file, or preferably the device or path it self, to tell MC not to keep on trying to write tags to the files if it's absent. As I'm not using external drives any more, this is not a priority for me. But others might have this problems.

Using this tags to filter out media, as Glynor suggests, would be useful as well.