I have been doing a lot of reading on user shares and split levels.  My desire was to use my user share as my source for XBMC.  And to be able to export my library from XBMC back to each folder through my user share, allowing it to add files to my movie folders.  But I am not sure that I really want this to happen.

 

My thinking is that I don't really want to be doing any real changes to my movies themselves.  The files that would be added will only be used when I add additional XBMC's to the network, and when I make manual changes and need to reload changes.  The files aren't needed for anything else, so technically, they could be deleted and re-exported anytime.  Also, when I add movies, I use only the disk shares, and prefer to do it this way. 

 

So, what if I just set one of my unused drives (call it my disk8) with the same user share (called Movies).  And then I can put the restriction on the user share to only include disk8, and exclude could be set to all other disks 1...7 and 9...11.

Then when viewed the actual user share would show these files combined with my movies, and that would make the XBMC think that they are all with the movie folders too. 

 

Would their be any harm in doing it this way?

 

 

 

 

What are you trying to achieve or what benefits do you believe this will give you?

 

It just seems that holding some metadata only would be a waste of a drive to me unless you have an older smaller drive in that slot.

 

I'd think a quick extension or file name search would allow you to mass delete those files if you so chose to. Split level 0 with the other settings left as default should keep the files with the already existing movie directory (I haven't tested it but that's what it's supposed to do).

 

Peter

 

Only thing that I am trying to do is have the ability to export my movie library data, make changes to it with XML notepad, and then re-scraper the movie data back.  Once this is done, I don't have any use for the data anymore.

 

The things I am change with XML notepad are:

1) Adding "set" to group movies as needed like James Bond

2) Adding "sorttitle" to change how I want some movies sorted

3) fixing minor issues like incorrect dates or mpaa rating

 

Also to add missing movie.tbn (movie art) as needed.

 

That really about it.

As for wasting a drive, actually the drive has data on it.  It has my TV show share on it.  I could have said that, but I was simplifying the plan a little.  And since it doesn't contain any of my Movie share, it's easy to isolate that drive for doing this.  Its just data that will be delete and exported to as need.

 

I plan to do the MySQL on the UnRaid and use it with the XBMC's, but I want to learn more about this first.  Plus I want to see what changes XBMC does with the handling of the file art in doing it this way

 

Well it sounds like a plan then. As far as I know, unRAID will use disks already containing a share even if you exclude them so give it a try.

 

Peter

 

 

 

My plan works out really well.  And the ability to delete everything inside the share on that disk, without risk of issues with my movie data is the best part for me.

 

I've got a leftover 80 gig. drive that I might add to my array just for handling this activity.  It's too small for me to want to waste the drive space for my array, but it would be huge for this job.

 

I would just need to figure out how to get another drive in my case.  All my bays are full at this time.