Largest USB drive

[Procat]

I would like to know if there is a size limit on a HD connected via USB to the movie server. Supposedly there is a max of 8TB in the server itself.
Thanks for any help

[SaturnV]

I have an 8TB USB Hard drive attached to the DMS working OK (other than the DMS issues with all USB drives where they add to the library but can't be played from the MOVIE or TV SHOWS poster walls - but they do play OK under "VIDEOS").

I think somebody reported on this forum they were using a 10TB internal SATA OK?

I actually have 3 USB drives permanently connected via a USB hub (plus internal 8TB). Although it takes the DMS a little while to recognize them, they do all work.

Currently with the price per TB being cheaper for 8TB drives than larger disks, attaching 2 x 8TB USB drives might be a better option than one larger drive. Surprisingly the USB hub works OK with the DMS.

It would still be nice to know how big a drive you can connect - if indeed there is any practical limit.

[DaveH50]

That was me, reporting a 10TB WD Red WD100EFAX 5400 RPM SATA 6.0Gbs internal drive. DVDFab only guarantees 8TB, so I thought it worth posting. Newegg had the drive on sale for $170 so I bought 4 of them. Current price at Newegg is $250 so I advise waiting for Black Friday sales.

Since then, I have connected a 10TB WD Easystore USB 3 external drive (which I got on sale at Best Buy for $149 - wish I had bought 2!). Absolutely no problems with DMS recognizing the external drive or with playback, even with uncompressed 50TB BD files at around 20 MBPS data rate. However you do have to steer DMS to finding the drive - there's a thread here which I don't recall, that explains how to get DMS to find the external drive.

Right now the 12TB and higher drives are more expensive per TB than the lower capacity drives, so I'll wait a few years for the price to come down. My movie collection is mostly DVD format (I've been collecting since around 2001), but all my latest ones are BD. I have about 3000 movies and they all fit on the 20TB total storage. However, there are external USB 3.0 drive bays holding 5 drives, with RAID5, for under $200. That would double my current 20TB total, and include error correction.

[tbrown25]

SaturnV
What are your seeing when you try to play USB files from the poster wall? I have both DVD and BD format files on my external USB drive that play from the poster wall without issue, even via the USB2 port....

[DaveH50]

All my movies found by the scraper and listed on the poster wall, play correctly whether on the internal drive or USB drive. I am using the firmware v2.0.1.0 update - could be SaturnV is using an older version.

BTW Newegg.com has the WD Easystore 10TB drive on sale today for $158, well worth the $$ IMHO.

[SaturnV]

I've never been able to play anything from either the TV or Movie Poster Wall that is stored on any attached USB drive. I thought it was a well-known problem - I gathered something to do with the USB sub-system assigning different drive names each time you restart the server. When you try to play an ISO on USB, it thinks about it for a while then comes back with a message something like "A fault occurred, contact DVDFab", or to that effect. They all play fine from the "VIDEO" button.

I thought this was a known issue DVDFab are working from, so I'm puzzled how it seems to work for you. ISOs on the internal SATA drive do however (usually) play OK from the Poster walls. I'm also on the latest Beta v2.0.1.0.

The other major problem is that for the past few Beta releases, I am unable to edit and correct any bad scrapes - it immediately comes back with "Not found" or words to that effect, too quick to have been out to the internet to check. Is that another issue others don't have?

[tbrown25]

SaturnV

Two questions:

Do you have the paths set up for the USB drives under "Manage Library"?

Do you have multiple partitions on your USB drives? My USB drives are single NTFS partitions and (under 2010) always come up under the same path (USBa for the USB 2 port and USBb for the USB 3 port) Under older firmware, they used to change paths almost every reboot.

DaveH50:
Have you tried the 10TB drive in your MS? The advertised limit is supposed to be 8TB, but I've seen posts that some larger drives do work correctly. Be interested to here if this one does.

[SaturnV]

Yup, the paths are setup under "Manage Library" (otherwise the scraper would never have found them). I'm using 8, 5 and 3TB drives, all with single partitions, connected using a 4-way hub, which I now suspect might be part of the problem. The USB drive name thing used to be a problem even for directly connected drives, but perhaps if this is now fixed it, my hub is causing the same symptoms - meaning I didn't notice it was fixed. At a convenient point I shall rebuild my library with only directly connected USB drives and see what happens. I'll report back.

[DaveH50]

tbrown25, yes, I am currently using the 10TB drive in my DMS and it works fine, as noted in post #3. The WD USB3 10TB external drive also works flawlessly in my DMS, my poster wall currently shows 2935 movies. I do have some mis-recognized movies (not many, amazingly enough) and have connected a USB keyboard to the USB 2.0 port to correct them. For one example, apparently the scraper does not have the 2-part TV show "Earthsea" (2004) in its database and keeps naming it as the animated movie "Tales from Earthsea" (2006) which I also have in my collection, so basically it shows up twice as "Tales from Earthsea". I have not gone through all 2935 movies yet to get an exact count, but so far I have found about 10 such mis-identified movies.

BTW, it is far easier using an external keyboard, than using the remote with the on-screen keyboard (which I have disabled in the setup menu; otherwise there are problems using the USB keyboard such as not being able to scroll through title names with the arrow keys on the keyboard).

SaturnV, have you tried bypassing your USB hub by using just one external USB drive connected directly to the DMS port, and not through the USB hub? That is my setup, and I know that works. You might try it, to see if there is a problem using a hub. If I ever require more external storage, I'm going to try one of the USB external bays that hold 5 drives. From the online description, in RAID 5 using all 5 bays, it shows up as just one 40TB external drive.

[tbrown25]

DaveH50:
Thanks much for the info. I will soon need to upgrade to a larger drive and it is good to know that this drive will work.

You are correct that "Earthsea" is not in The Movie Database (where the MS gets it's metadata). It would be nice if the MS allowed the user to add their own data for that situation, but at this point it does not, as far as I can tell. However, one can get a "contributor" account to themoviedsb.org and add data to that system. Then it can be used by the MS. Kind of a roundabout way to do it. I have not added a completely new movie via that path, but I have corrected episode plots and added posters where the system was lacking one.

I use a Bluetooth keyboard for the exact same reasons. It works well, even though I get a weird caution message on boot up that Bluetooth and USB devices may conflict with each other. (They don't)

[DaveH50]

tbrown25 - unfortunately, I can't get the external keyboard to work in the "search" title box, only in the edit title box. Why this is, I have no idea. My guess is that the devs used different applets for each, and didn't bother with the external keyboard support in the search function.

I can still tell the difference between the 2 copies of "Tales from Earthsea" because DMS shows the storage folder and I named each folder using the movie title. I have also stored the movie poster and an RTF file with the metadata for each movie in the folder, but while DMS recognizes JPG's, it doesn't recognize Rich Text Format files. Plain text files, yes. Haven't tried any other formats like PDF.

IMHO, DMS is still too much like a programmer's experiment than a commercially viable product. Even the original iPhone was more polished, self-consistent and functional out of the box than DMS. However the quality of the video playback is excellent. I have noted one further fault - copying the main movie from a BD disc, with subtitles selected in DVDFab, often results in DMS not finding them during playback. However they show up fine if I play the movie in Cyberlink PowerDVD. Since my wife loves to sit on the sofa next to me and talk with her friends on the phone while I try to watch a movie, I find subtitles pretty helpful instead of cranking the volume up.

[SaturnV]

tbrown25, I tried without the usb hub, direct usb connect, library rebuild, no difference. I now think the problem is with my dvdfab account - see my new post. My dms was replaced, but is still registered under the same email address. USB drives added to the library all have an smb prefix, so appear to be network shares. The Video library probably uses the local file system and works ok. If I'm correct, Posters in Movies and TV shows don't work because this two dms servers on one account situation I suspect is preventing playback from the network shares. I also have a strange icon at the top of the dms home page that might be indicating I'm not logged in - although I did this apparently ok (and re-logged in several times with factory resets etc.)

Just a hypothesis, but it seems to fit the facts. In some ways this is good news, leaving hope that using usb hubs to expand the number of connected usb drives might work ok once I've got this sorted.

I echo the last paragraph of the above post. The thing is nothing else on the market seems to do what the dms can do (on a good day with the wind behind you..). I love my dms, but it can be very frustrating, and the amount of time I've wasted wrestling with it..

[tbrown25]

SaturnV
I, too, have a strange icon at the top of the MS screen. It looks like the head of a person with a small X . IT first appeared when I upgraded to version 2 firmware. Like you stated, it looks like it is saying I am not logged in, but I am as far as I can tell. I once posted a question as to what that icon meant, but never got any answer.

[SaturnV]

tbrown25

That's the icon!

It's probably a red-herring then, and nothing to do with the issues I'm having playing Poster-wall media stored on USB, because you don't have that problem. I am however convinced it is something to do with USB paths added to the library search path all have an "smb" prefix - which I guess is an abbreviation for Samba, and that these are network shares, unlike from the Video wall. Network shares normally require a username and password - which is why that icon made me wonder if I had a problem with my login, thus preventing playback using this path. The 60s wait before it fails to play USB media sounds like a network, or disk spin-up timeout delay.

I think I remember an earlier DMS version allowed you to directly edit the library search path. If I could, I would create /mnt paths for the USB devices to test my hypothesis, but I was unable to find which version allowed you to do that - I tried 1.0.3.5, 2.0.0.1, 1.0.1.0 etc. but still couldn't edit the path. My theory was that I might be able to add a full, local path, then hopefully upgrade the DMS software without losing the search path changes. Oh well, nice idea in theory.

If I'm right, it's odd that you have to add locally attached devices as network shares. I know the network is usually smart enough to do a loop-back, but it does add a level of complexity and must take longer to negotiate down and up the network stack.

[Komet]

Hi guys,
have two questions:
1. Is the external USB hard disk connected to the DMS recognized by the network? (DVDFab11> Transfer to MovieServer) Or do I have to disconnect every time the hard drive and go to the PC to draufzuspielen new movies?

2. I have tried in my DMS Vers.2.0.1.0 an internal 4TB hard drive to install. File system tried once with EXT3 and NTFS. Hard disk is not recognized by the DMS. Even formatting via the DMS does not work. A 1TB internal hard disk as NTFS works perfectly. At some point wanted to install a 10TB internal hard drive, but if the 4TB is not already ... What can this be, what am I doing wrong?

Thank you ...